We sleep, they creep: masked night-time raiders bash and slash
From Melbourne to Mildura, through NSW into Queensland, increasingly violent home invasions have stoked a community movement calling for ‘Castle Law’ to defend their homes.
Darryl Munn and his teenage son were sleeping in a NSW country motel in the early hours of last Boxing Day when they were woken by banging at their door.
It wasn’t the polite knock of someone trying to get their attention; it sounded like their door was being kicked in.
As Mr Munn leapt out of bed and grabbed a chair for protection the door collapsed to reveal a frightening sight: three youths wearing skeleton masks and armed with knives were advancing into their room.
“And they were screaming, ‘keys and wallet, keys and wallet or we’ll kill you!’’’
Mr Munn, 52, had a new car that he didn’t want to lose, so he blocked their way by thrusting the legs of the chair at the intruders as one allegedly yelled “stab him, just stab him”.
“I kept ramming the chair at them and they were hitting the legs of the chair with the knives,” Mr Munn says. “Then they worked out they weren’t getting in and they bashed someone else’s door down.”
A few rooms along an elderly couple were in shock. The intruders had indeed smashed their way in, threatened the pair and drove off in their car.
Across town, Canberra couple Kosa Nikolic, 64 and her husband, Stanisa, 86, were in the hands of ambulance officers. The same gang had broken through the security door of their motel, stealing their car keys and knocking Mrs Nikolic unconscious, leaving her with a broken wrist requiring surgery.
The guests at these motels in Moree, northwest NSW, had just become the targets of a disturbingly brazen crime cropping up in pockets across the country: home and motel invasions by roving youth gangs armed with machetes, knives, iron bars, even tomahawks.
Police records are littered with homeowners and travellers being bashed and slashed by masked night-time raiders whose brazen “you sleep, we creep” crimes have shocked hardened cops.
The age of the intruders, some still in primary school, and their callous use of violence have set residents on edge, not just in Moree and other towns in regional NSW.
From Melbourne to Mildura, through NSW into Queensland, increasingly violent home invasions have stoked a community movement calling for “Castle Law” to give greater legal protections to victims to defend their homes.
In the Northern Territory, adults can now legally use pepper spray to protect themselves. Residents signing “Castle Law” petitions in NSW, Queensland and Victoria also want to take a stand. Instead of being able to use reasonable force proportionate to the risk, as generally allowed, they want the legal protection to use whatever force they deem necessary to protect their homes.
“This is about the basic human right to defend yourself, your loved ones and your home without fear of being the one dragged through the courts for doing the right thing,” says north Queensland Katter’s Australian Party MP Nick Dametto, who has gathered more than 80,000 signatures on his petition calling for stronger self-defence rights.
Those pushing for the new laws want to empower homeowners and deter crooks.
But it ignores the fact that it’s not easy to fight back against multiple armed intruders.
A 39-year-old Melbourne dad was recently stabbed 11 times while defending his family from five armed intruders who allegedly broke into their Kew East home at 4am in a random attack. (Two youths aged 16 and 17, along with a 24-year-old man have been charged).
“I’ve never seen anything like this, this is awful,” said Detective Sergeant Leeanne Trusler. “A family … asleep in their home, nearly four o’clock in the morning, the house is secure, they’re meant to be safe.”
Earlier this month AFL football great Mick Malthouse was jabbed in the chest with a screwdriver, receiving minor injuries, during a tussle with three armed offenders trying to break into his East Melbourne apartment. He told the media that people were “sick to death” of the rising crime rate.
“We can’t be governed by unruly people who choose to put balaclavas over their faces … carry screwdrivers and whatnot and think it’s normal.”
Horrendous crime
There’s one particular crime that NSW Acting Police Commissioner Paul Pisanos won’t easily forget after viewing disturbing footage filmed by the intruders in a regional NSW home.
An elderly couple were sleeping while two young burglars wearing balaclavas and armed with machetes circled their bed pretending to attack them.
“They were actually simulating stabbing the elderly man in the chest and cutting the woman’s throat, hovering the weapons just above them,” Mr Pisanos says.
“These very old people were oblivious, asleep in their bed, and this was being filmed, and I remember that’s when the significance and the seriousness of what we were dealing with came home to me.’’
It’s not that the rate of violent burglaries and car thefts is surging – the figures are generally steady or dipping in NSW and Queensland while soaring in Victoria.
Police say it’s the violence, the use of weapons, the ages of the offenders and their forensic awareness to cover their faces or burn the stolen cars that’s stoking alarm.
Roy Morgan crime research released last month shows two-thirds of Australians believe that crime is a growing problem in their community, a higher figure than at any point in the past 10 years.
For victims, many older citizens, a home invasion is a terrifying often life-changing event.
Marilyn Figgett, a 75-year-old profoundly deaf grandmother from Kempsey on the NSW mid-north coast, has lived through 17 home invasions carried out by thieves looking for cars. “I’ve been harassed in my home to the point where at one stage I was diagnosed with PTSD,’’ Ms Figgett told a NSW parliamentary inquiry
The list goes on: an 84-year-old woman who built a safe room in her home. “She lives in total fear. She hears a noise and she has to go and lock herself in,’’ said former Kempsey principal Gail Cheers, who has herself been targeted three times.
“Another 78-year-old widow had her car keys stolen, phone, and money. She was belted with a baseball bat very close to her head, on her shoulder. She was black from the neck to her hips.”
Moree councillor Kelly James, who has also started a NSW “Castle Law” petition, knows a woman in her 80s who now sleeps on the couch with a shovel for protection after a home invasion.
“Whatever happened to the right to live without fear in this country?” Ms James says.
Two doctors have been targeted in the past six months – a GP in Moree suffered a broken nose in an alleged burglary in which two vehicles were stolen (a 17-year-old youth was charged), and a 73-year-old locum doctor at Walgett was held at knifepoint and his car stolen (three 14-year-olds were subsequently charged).
“We are ashamed that this kind of violence is happening in our town. This cycle of violence cannot continue,” Walgett shire mayor Jasen Ramien said in response to the June attack.
A few weeks ago in Taree, on the NSW mid-north coast, three intruders, one with a machete, ransacked the home of an 83-year-old woman, leaving her with minor injuries.
And in Moree last month, a 68-year-old motel guest suffered significant head injuries when two intruders allegedly armed with a metal object broke into his room (a 16-year-old has been charged).
Moree has long struggled with crime spikes but motel intrusions, targeting out-of-towners with nice cars, have signalled a dangerous turn. There have been up to 20 such incidents in the past year.
“I think that’s unique to Moree – because of the town’s beautiful artesian baths you have elderly travellers coming through … and unbeknown to them there was opportunistic targeting of some of those motels in Moree,’’ says Mr Pisanos.
“We work with the owners of the motels and local government to look at fortifications and other things but the reality is that we needed to target the crime and work out who was responsible and break the chain of repeat offending.”
Terrified in Moree
Mr Munn, a Townsville field service technician with an equipment company, was alert to the risk when he checked into a Moree motel with his son for a Christmas visit with family. The caretaker had warned him that youths had been kicking in guests’ doors to steal car keys. “I never thought anything of it but as soon as I heard the banging and crashing I thought, that’s what it is; they’re kicking the door in,” he says.
In the aftermath he went to check on the older guests in the other room who had also been threatened. “He was just standing there, in shock I think, saying ‘there’s nothing I could do’ and his wife was still in bed and she was crying,” Mr Munn says.
What they didn’t know was that the gang, which allegedly included a 14-year-old, had already broken into a room at another motel.
Kosa and Stanisa Nikolic have been travelling to Moree for at least 20 years to enjoy the artesian springs, making friends in the town which maintains a strong community spirit.
About 3am on Boxing Day the security door and lock on the Nikolics’ door was smashed in and three masked intruders with knives were suddenly in their room, demanding the keys to their older model Mercedes.
Stanisa tried to rise but was pushed back into the bed and as Kosa tried to follow the offenders out of the room she was shoved in the chest into a wall, breaking her wrist and briefly losing consciousness. “My husband said I flew like a piece of paper against the corner of the building, and that’s where I went unconscious,” she says.
“I now have a metal plate in my left wrist, and I’m still struggling, I still can’t do the things I used to do, and I’m a tough lady.’’
The couple’s Mercedes was recovered but Mrs Nikolic had to take time off from her retail job for the surgery and recovery and says her husband is still having nightmares. She says the intruders weren’t interested in their mobile phone or wallet, focusing just on their car keys.
The spectre of teen offenders racing around in stolen cars, uploading their antics to TikTok and goading police to chase them has only added to community unease.
A 52-year-old Narrabri man, Daniel McNamara, was killed near Gunnedah in January after his motorcycle was allegedly hit by a stolen ute driven by a teen. Three 14-year-old boys have been charged with manslaughter.
Tamworth MP Kevin Anderson joined a police patrol in August when an 11-year-old boy was taken into custody for allegedly stealing a car. “The changing face of crime is getting younger; 10, 11 and 12-year-olds are committing brazen and violent acts of crime, it’s a serious escalation,’’ he recently told NSW parliament.
Assistant Commissioner Andrew Holland, who covers the huge western region of NSW, put it bluntly to the parliamentary inquiry late last year. Kids in metropolitan areas tend to sneak into houses, grab car keys and disappear. “The kids here seem to be more prone to going in there with a weapon. If someone takes them on, they’ll use the weapon. That’s the unfortunate part. I think that’s part of the upbringing – a part of the socialisation … They live in a life of violence,” he said.
In Victoria, Commander Mark Galliott said the core offenders didn’t care about consequences. “They don’t think about that next step and some of our traditional levers in society don’t work.’’
His state last week classified machetes as prohibited weapons in an attempt to crack down on their use in crime.
Mr Pisanos believes that youths influenced by social media are upping the ante in competition with each other to see who can create more shock and horror. “It’s a generation that’s becoming desensitised to a level of violence that would shock our generation, because we didn’t have this stuff around us growing up,” he says.
Like other states, NSW has introduced a number of responses: a tougher bail test for repeat offenders aged 14-18, and a new offence to post footage boasting of crimes. Millions of dollars have been poured into the regions – including $15m to improve safety in Moree, which already has about 50 organisations delivering programs.
Operation Soteria, launched in March to provide rapid police response in nine regional youth crime hot spots, has had an immediate effect, leading to a 40 per cent drop in aggravated burglaries and car theft, an important circuit breaker, says Mr Pisanos.
Law reform
The NSW government has ordered a review of doli incapax, a legal principle that presumes children under 14 don’t understand the difference between right and wrong.
Moree Plains Shire mayor Susannah Pearse says this is an important issue for her town which has offenders aged 10 to 14. The recent police crackdowns have provided some reprieve for residents but youth crime is the area’s big challenge, she says.
“And what we hear from police is that they round them up pretty quickly, put them before the courts but because of doli incapax they’re getting off and the courts can’t order any kind of interventions like mental health support or substance abuse support.”
An Indigenous-run accommodation centre to house youths on bail who can’t safely go home is being developed but this will only alleviate part of the problem, Ms Pearse says.
“Because what we are dealing with here is a wider youth homelessness issue,” she says. “There are kids out on our streets at night because home isn’t safe and we do not have anywhere in Moree that can provide that overnight facility and give those kids what every kid needs, which is a bed, a meal, a safe place to sleep, a safe place to be supported. That’s what we need.”
Youth crisis
Around Kempsey and Port Macquarie, Deb Tougher is the outreach manager for YP Space, the sort of specialist youth homelessness service that the Moree mayor wants in her town.
Ms Tougher is at the coalface of this issue and had some hard truths for a NSW parliamentary committee hearing into community safety. Kids starving, malnourished, living in abject poverty, addicted to drugs such as ice at eight years of age. There are high rates of mental health issues, undiagnosed disabilities, foetal alcohol syndrome.
She knows of young people going into detention, coming out and committing another offence so they can go back to detention where they have a bed and a feed.
There’s generational trauma involving Aboriginal children, she says, but it’s not just Indigenous children she deals with. “We’ve got kids growing up in extremely volatile, unsafe environments that you and I would be too terrified to walk into but that’s their day to day experience,” she says.
She feels for the victims of crime but wants to find a way to help the youth and break the cycle of crime. “These kids haven’t just sprung up out of nowhere,” she says.
Mr Pisanos that says while his first priority is community protection and safety, police are aware of the deeper social issues driving youth crime.
“We recognise that there are some really young people involved in this from very difficult backgrounds with social disadvantage and lots of harm in the home, and there is an over representation of First Nations young people,’’ he says. “We police the problem … but it’s bigger than just the policing solution. There’s a far more complex issue for government to tackle.”
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