Time in jail may have prolonged Preston’s life

Long stints in jail may have prolonged Gavin Preston’s life – but his time finally ran out last Saturday.

Underworld figure Gavin Preston was shot dead at a Melbourne cafe last Saturday. Picture: Supplied

Slain underworld enforcer Gavin Preston missed much of Melbourne’s gang war because he was behind bars in Victoria and NSW on a string of violence and armed robbery offences.

Fresh details of his criminal history reveal that as bullets started flying in the late 1990s and early 2000s, claiming the lives of some 30 men, Preston – shot dead last Saturday in a deadly hit as he was having breakfast at a suburban cafe – was off the streets in jail.

CCTV shows the moment infamous criminal Gavin Preston was gunned down at a cafe.

County Court sentencing records show that in August 1992, aged 20, Preston was jailed for a maximum of 30 months’ jail for recklessly causing serious injury and intentionally causing serious injury.

In October 1996, he was jailed for a maximum of 8½ years, with a minimum term of six years, for armed robbery. He was also jailed on concurrent sentences for a range of other offences, including aggravated burglary and intentionally causing injury.

After Preston was released, it wasn’t long before he again found himself in strife with police, this time in NSW, where he was arrested on serious weapons charges.

In 2004 he was jailed for a minimum of two years and three months for possessing a loaded gun, receiving stolen property, supplying drugs and assault.

Upon his release in late 2005, he was returned to Victoria and jailed until 2007 because his parole conditions from the armed robbery banned interstate travel.

In sentencing Preston in 2015 to a decade behind bars over the defensive homicide of drug dealer Adam Khoury, Supreme Court judge Cameron Macauley said he doubted the career criminal could ever turn his life around.

“Clearly, this history of offending, and the nature of your present offending against the background of that history, would appear to stand as a near impenetrable barrier to acceptance of the idea that you might be rehabilitated from violent crime,” he said. “Likewise it would appear to suggest community protection should be a key sentencing objective.”

The judge did note that after his release from prison in 2007, Preston made a “concerted effort to rebuild” his life. “By this stage you were living with Ms Preston and you attribute a significant degree of rehabilitation to the support she gave you,” he said.

Victoria Police has launched a major manhunt for the shooter and driver involved in last Saturday’s hit on Preston, 51, as he sat opposite associate AJ Maghnie at Sweet Lulu’s cafe in Keilor.

The killers struck about 10.30am, driving a stolen black Audi Q5 to the scene, before the triggerman sprinted to within a few metres of the men and unleashed a volley of pistol shots.

Preston died on the spot. Maghnie was struck in the stomach but is expected to survive.