‘F***ing stupidity’: Naked mangrove fugitive to spend three months in ‘chateau de Holtze’

AFTER judge Greg Macdonald gave him the option of having part of his sentence suspended on the condition he stay out of trouble, the former fugitive promised to ‘give it a crack’

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NAKED mangrove fugitive Luke Voskerensky has been given the option of getting out of jail a month early if he promises to behave himself.

Voskerensky was sentenced in the Darwin Local Court on Friday after earlier pleading guilty to aggravated assault and breaching bail by fleeing into the mangroves on New Year’s Eve.

The court heard Voskerensky was on bail for an earlier assault when he was drinking with his ex-girlfriend at his motel on Boxing Day last year and began to question her about her relationship with another man.

Luke Voskerensky he spent four days skipping bail in the mangroves near the Darwin Turf Club in January. Picture: Supplied

As the couple argued, Voskerensky threw the woman’s handbag into the gutter and grabbed her by the hair, causing her pain.

The next day, Voskerensky removed his electronic monitoring device and left it in a car parked at Bunnings before booking a flight to Cairns under a false name on December 30.

Later, while on a bus to Palmerston, he “became paranoid that the police were going to arrest him” and got off the bus with another man and the pair fled into the mangroves near the Darwin Turf Club.

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The other man lost sight of Voskerensky in the thick bush and he spent the next four days hiding from police before he was found naked by a local fisho and taken to Royal Darwin Hospital where he was arrested and charged.

When asked by police why he had taken off his elecronic monitoring device, Voskerensky replied “F***ing stupidity, I don’t know”.

Fisho Cam Faust helped rescue fugitive Luke Voskerensky after he spent four days skipping bail in the mangroves near the Darwin Turf Club in January. Picture: Supplied

He was later found guilty of “unjustly and unfairly” assaulting a man who he believed had stolen his wallet before finding it on the ground with the money still in it.

In sentencing Voskerensky to four months’ prison, to be suspended after three months if he could agree to stay out of trouble, judge Greg Macdonald said the assault on Voskerensky’s ex was toward the lower end of the scale of seriousness.

“What you did was demeaning to her, humiliating, bullying and criminal,” he said.

Mr Macdonald said he accepted Voskerensky’s “four days in the mangroves being fed on by sandflies” amounted to a form of self-inflicted extra-curial punishment and should be taken into account.

“I don’t think anyone would dispute that four days in the mangroves in that state would be extremely uncomfortable,” he said.

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After Mr Macdonald gave Voskerensky the option of having part of his sentence suspended on the condition he keep his nose clean, the former fugitive promised to “give it a crack”.

“The chateau de Holtze isn’t the best place to be,” he said.

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