As it happened: WA news on Friday, January 31

Good afternoon readers, and thanks for following along today.

It’s been a huge day, with developments on major crime cases, including sentencings for serial rapist Adam Lusk and two Perth parents who starved their daughter, and an internal report into police failures to prevent Mark Bombara’s murders of Jennifer and Gretl Petelczyc last year.

The WA election campaign trail has also run hot, with WA’s power grid, housing and cost of living all being debated today.

Spare a thought for parts of the City of Albany and neighbouring shires who are this afternoon subject to bushfire emergency warnings and watch and act alerts.

And parts of the inland Pilbara, Midwest and Gascoyne regions, being subject to a heatwave watch and act alert, and for parts of the Wheatbelt and Goldfields regions which are subject to a heatwave advice.

Perth, at least, can be grateful for a reprieve from extreme weather this weekend, so get out there and enjoy it – there are plenty of Fringe World shows on, for a start, including comedy shows from Luke McGregor (State Theatre Centre) and Lizzy Hoo (The Rechabite).

Finally, good luck to the Wildcats who are playing South East Melbourne tonight at RAC Arena, or so say my sports-literate colleagues.

We’ll be back on Monday with a fresh live blog.

In more rugby news, new Western Force recruit Darcy Swain has set his sights on becoming a ball-carrying beast as he attempts to resurrect his Wallabies career.

Swain hasn’t featured for the Wallabies since being part of the side that suffered a shock 28-27 loss to Italy in November 2022.

The 27-year-old had been a fixture at the Brumbies since making his debut in 2018, establishing himself as one of the country’s best locks.

Darcy Swain of the Wallabies wins a line out ball during a match against the New Zealand All Blacks in 2022.Credit: Getty Images AsiaPac

But just like Nic White a year before him, Swain felt it was time for a change, and the lure of Perth’s stunning beaches combined with the excitement of helping coach Simon Cron turn the Force into a powerhouse proved too hard to resist.

“I feel like if you keep doing the same things, you are going to get the same results. I needed a change,” Swain said.

“I’ve come over here to challenge myself and try to grow as a player.”

Part of that growth is about Swain taking on more attacking responsibility.

“It’s easy when you have Rob Valetini outside of you,” Swain said in reference to the star Brumbies and Wallabies back rower.

“He’s a beast of a ball carrier. So I just gave it to him every time - like it was just easy. I felt like I sort of did myself dirty in that way.”

Swain, who has 17 Wallabies caps to his name, wants to become that beast of a ball carrier himself and is signed at the Force for the next two Super Rugby seasons to work on that goal.

And in good news for Force fans, Swain hopes to stay at the club even longer than that.

AAP

Turning to the District Court now, and the Floreat parents who infantalised and starved their daughter, concocting a cascading series of lies to protect themselves, have been sentenced to years behind bars.

In handing down the sentence, Judge Linda Black said the pair had engaged in “wilful blindness of the most extreme kind” by ignoring their daughter’s emaciated state as she “faded away”.

The case has shocked the nation. Credit: Fairfax

The court was told the couple, both aged 48, isolated their daughter and starved her to the point at which she was hospitalised aged 16, weighing 27.3 kilograms and spending months on a nasogastric feeding tube.

The girl was only hospitalised in 2021 at the insistence of the Department of Communities, which had been fielding concerns from the girl’s dance instructors about her malnourished state, yellow skin and oddly child-like clothing.

Black pored over hospital notes taken during the girl’s admission, in which medical staff observed her watching The Wiggles and sitting on her mother’s lap, as well as photographs the judge said demonstrated the family’s Floreat home was devoid of anything age-appropriate.

Black said it was clear neither of the accused felt any remorse, instead believing they were the victims of a conspiracy.

The judge also lambasted the state’s education department for what she described as its “dismal failure” to ensure the homeschooled child was adequately monitored.

The girl wept in the back of the court as her mother was sentenced to five years’ jail and her father 6½.

The couple have been behind bars since November after the jury took just four hours to find them guilty of engaging in reckless conduct while caring for a child.

They will be eligible for parole.

West Coast Fever are wrapping their arms around Jhaniele Fowler-Nembhard after she suffered the loss of her unborn baby.

The 198cm powerhouse won the league’s MVP award five years in a row from 2018-2022, and has led the league in scoring for the past seven years.Credit: James Worsfold/Getty Images

Fowler-Nembhard announced in December she was pregnant and would miss the 2025 Super Netball season.

But in tragic news on Friday, it was announced Fowler-Nembhard had suffered a pregnancy loss.

“It is with sadness and heartbreak that we inform the netball community that Jhaniele Fowler-Nembhard and her family have suffered the loss of their ‘Baby Fowler-Nembhard’,” Fever general manager Sue Gaudion said in a statement.

“Everyone at West Coast Fever is utterly devastated for Jhaniele, Ashani and Drehannah. We are wrapping our arms around them during this incredibly difficult time.

“Our club will continue to support Jhaniele and her family through the days, weeks and months ahead as they navigate this heartbreaking situation.”

The Fever signed Malawi International Mwai Kumwenda in December as a replacement for Fowler-Nembhard.

Fowler-Nembhard is arguably the world’s best goalshooter, with the 35-year-old having a profound impact at the Fever over the past seven years.

The Red Nose Grief and Loss Support Line is available 24/7 for anyone affected by the loss of a pregnancy, stillbirth or death of a baby or child on 1300 308 307.

AAP

Back to the election trail and both major parties have looked to past efforts and announcements by Labor to present their cases – though from vastly different angles.

Labor was in Midland spruiking its existing $80 million Infrastructure Development Fund.

WA Liberals leader Libby Mettam and Premier Roger Cook.Credit: Trevor Collens

Premier Roger Cook and Housing Minister John Carey announced 20 developments and 1560 dwellings that would share in $16.37 million from the fund to get under way.

Carey also revealed the government had paid $30 million for 50 off-the-plan apartments on Beaufort Street in Inglewood for seniors.

The project was procured under the ‘Call for Submissions for Social Housing’ initiative.

“Through programs like the Infrastructure Development Fund, we’re fast-tracking new homes when they’re needed most and we’re looking to the future, unlocking land to make sure we can meet the needs of our growing state,” Cook said.

Meanwhile, the Liberals have targeted recent blackouts across the south-west power grid as an example of the Cook government’s poor management of the system.

Mettam visited the Glengarry shopping centre in Duncraig, which lost power for about nine hours yesterday, with Carine candidate Liam Staltari to press her case.

Staltari said the IGA lost $15,000 worth of sales and stock as a result of the outage while the owner of the optometrist said they had to cancel the appointments of nine patients.

One man who had to wait overnight to get seen found his glaucoma medication had stopped working in one eye, which could have cost him his vision.

Mettam said the blackouts were a result of the government’s failure to maintain the energy grid correctly.

More on that WA Police press conference, where Police Commissioner Col Blanch outlined the findings of a damning internal report which resulted in eight officers facing disciplinary action.

Blanch said the investigation had three findings: first, that the initial risk assessment did not correctly assess the risk Mark Bombara posed to his family or others – which meant powers available under the Restraining Orders Act and Firearms Act were not exercised.

Ariel Bombara, the daughter of Floreat murderer Mark Bombara, speaks at a press conference on Friday regarding an internal investigation into WA Police’s handling of the tragedy.Credit: 9News Perth

Secondly, police did not take sufficient action to find out whether Bombara was a “fit and proper person” to hold a firearms licence. Bombara legally owned 13 guns, despite his family’s fears.

And thirdly, there was insufficient action taken to investigate Bombara’s alleged firearms offences, which included a report of an unsecured firearm.

Blanch said the investigation resulted in 18 recommendations, which police were implementing alongside the government and specialists in the family violence support and services industry. So far, he said, 11 had been completed.

“Sadly, we got this one wrong, but we are committed to making sure that it is never repeated,” Blanch said.

Bombara’s daughter, Ariel, is supporting police in implementing the report’s recommendations, and also spoke at the press conference today.

“This report identifies all of the risk factors we communicated to the police; [Bombara’s] history of abuse, access to and incorrect storage of firearms, including concealable handguns, that he was escalating, that he’d had a recent stroke,” she said.

“We told you that he was going to murder us, so did you not believe us? Or did you just not give a shit?

“I can have empathy for human beings making mistakes, but that is a lot of human beings making a lot of mistakes; a lot of human beings missing a lot of red flags, red flags that seem so obvious to me that it baffles me that actual police officers, whose job it is to protect people, did not take this risk seriously.”

Ariel said after receiving “countless messages” from women who had stories of police not taking their concerns seriously, she was not surprised that no action was taken about her father.

“This was the perfect storm of apathy and compassion fatigue from officers, combined with shoddy systems, outdated policies and insufficient training and support that resulted in a lethal outcome,” she said.

“Jenny and Gretel Petelczyc should not have been murdered. They deserved so much better.”

WA Police officers failed to take adequate preemptive actions which could have prevented the murders of a Floreat mother and her daughter, a damning internal report has revealed.

The inquiry was launched after Ariel Bombara, the daughter of double-murderer Mark Bombara, accused police of ignoring the threats her father posed in the lead-up to the tragedy.

WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch.Credit: 9News Perth

Bombara, 63, shot and killed Jennifer Petelczyc and her 18-year-old daughter Gretl in May last year before turning the gun on himself.

He had been searching for his estranged wife and Ariel, who were close friends with the Petelczyc family and had fled from their Mosman Park home in fear of him.

Bombara legally owned multiple guns, despite Ariel and her mother repeatedly warning police he was dangerous on three separate occasions between March 30 and April 2. Those warnings included fears that he may exact revenge after they left.

At a press conference on Friday ahead of the report’s release, WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch said it was found eight police officers failed to perform their duties, with “internal disciplinary action” already taken.

Blanch said if a proper risk assessment had been completed, Bombara’s guns could have been taken off him, potentially averting the tragedy.

National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

We take to you a press conference now, where WA Police are speaking about an internal investigation following the horrific Floreat double-murder suicide last year.

Watch the press conference below:

A West Australian father who was found guilty last year on 97 counts of rape over the horrific assaults of 12 women has been sentenced to 28 years behind bars.

Lusk, 46, filmed himself raping multiple women.Credit: Nine News.

Adam Lusk, 46, drugged and raped the women between April 2020 and January 2022. During his trial, the Perth District Court was told one victim was just 16 years old at the time.

Some had no idea they had been assaulted until police contacted them after finding footage of the assaults on an iPad owned by Lusk.

On Friday, a judge told the court that Lusk had been in the army between 1996 and 2002, and that he likely had PTSD as a result of a deployment to East Timor.

When his marriage ended, life “slowly unravelled” and then, in 2020, he attacked his first victim.

The judge said his circumstances were no justification for the attacks, nor his pleas of not guilty, which forced the victims to testify.

“I still cannot work out in my own mind how you’re so self-deluded that you gave denial.”

Lusk’s sentence was backdated to when he was first taken into custody on January 20, 2022. He will be eligible for parole after serving 26 years.

Read the full story here.

To some politics news outside cost-of-living measures now and the WA Greens have called for a moratorium on seismic blasting off the state’s coast.

The call comes as oil and gas giant Woodside gears up to ask for permission to take on the practice at Scott Reef as it seeks approval for its Browse carbon capture and storage project.

At a press conference outside, you guessed it, Woodside’s headquarters in Perth, Greens WA fossil fuel and marine and coastal spokeswoman Sophie McNeill said the mining company had acknowledged its seismic blasting plans could harm endangered blue whales and loggerhead turtles.

“It is unfathomable that the federal regulators could approve such activity in this highly sensitive marine environment, home to dozens of endangered, vulnerable and threatened species,” she said.

“Western Australia’s oceans and our marine life are already suffering horrific consequences as a result of warming temperatures and continued fossil fuel production.

“The time to end seismic blasting and new oil and gas exploration off our WA coast is now.“

Woodside’s application for approval for the CCS project says the impact of blasting and other activities on marine life would be minimal.