Larkin Dwayne Moffatt, 25, found guilty of manslaughter over shooting death of Chris Anderson
The devastated family of an innocent father shot dead metres from his home following a violent home invasion have spoken of “pure devastation” after his killer was found guilty of manslaughter, not murder.
The devastated family of an innocent father shot dead metres from his home following a violent home invasion have spoken of “pure devastation” after his killer was found guilty of manslaughter, not murder.
Larkin Dwayne Moffatt, 25, who has the word “wild” tattooed across his fingers, fatally shot Chris Anderson moments after fleeing the victim’s Ipswich home he had just invaded and robbed with three others in July 2021.
Mr Anderson’s sister Lisa Conlon said the entire process from her brother’s homicide to Friday’s verdict had traumatised the family.
“It’s been pure devastation,” she said outside Brisbane’s Supreme Court where the trial was held.
“I don’t know how you can go there with a gun and kill someone and it’s just manslaughter. I don’t understand that. It should be life for a life.”
About a week before the shooting, Mr Anderson’s partner Felicity Torrens supplied meth to a woman who was buying on behalf of Shaun Jason Birt.
Less was supplied than agreed and Birt decided to front up to the home of Ms Torrens where she lived with Mr Anderson and their infant son.
Birt brought Moffatt, his brother Markiss Graham Moffatt-Cleary and Aidan Eden Pascoe who was armed with a .410 shotgun.
After a brief discussion with Mr Anderson the men forced their way into the home.
Ms Torrens told the trial she was going to give Birt the shortfall in drugs along with the money to cover it but he wasn’t satisfied.
“He said no ‘we want it all’,” she said.
Pascoe discharged his gun into a living room wall.
Ms Torrens fled with the child out a back window and the invaders took off but not before Moffatt laid his hands on Mr Anderson’s Nike Air Jordans and a bottle of Bundaberg rum.
Mr Anderson chased the men as they left the home picking up a shovel on his way using it to hit their getaway car and some of the intruders.
It was around then that Moffatt, who had been released on parole for just three days earlier, shot Mr Anderson in the chest.
The .22 bullet penetrated his heart and he died shortly afterwards.
“I want to make it very clear that Chris had no part in this. This wasn’t his drug deal that went wrong, he was just in his home,” Ms Conlon said.
“He’s had to suffer, we’ve had to suffer, and it’s been really unfortunate that it’s been four and a half years and I was hoping to get a better outcome so we can get some closure and heal.
“It’s been like the darkest cloud that has just hung over our heads for so long. It’s destroyed our family.”
She said her heart broke for her brother’s children Ally and little Chris
“They don’t get to see their dad anymore. I don’t get to see my brother,” she said.
“The offenders can still see their family. They don’t understand how severely it has impacted our family.”
The process has been particularly distressing for the family, who have attended each day of trial, as they had to endure Moffatt’s first trial which resulted in a hung jury earlier this year.
“I had to do it because Chris would have done it. He was just so fiercely protective. And that’s what he did until last breath. He was protecting his home and his family,” Ms Conlon said.
Moffatt had pleaded not guilty to murder and not guilty to burglary while armed and in company. He was found guilty of manslaughter on the basis of provocation and the aggravated burglary after the jury began deliberating on Wednesday afternoon.
Birt, Pascoe and Moffatt-Cleary were originally charged with murder but moments before a trial involving all four offenders was set to begin in May Pascoe 35, agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter.
In the days that followed, Moffatt’s brother Moffatt-Cleary, 23, and Birt, 31 likewise took a plea deal to manslaughter.
The three men – who all agreed to give evidence against Moffatt at trial – were sentenced to imprisonment earlier this year.
Pascoe was sentenced to nine years’ jail and Birt to eight-and-a-half years’ jail with immediate parole eligibility with time already served.
Moffatt-Cleary was sentenced to five years immediately suspended with time served.
During their sentencing in May Justice Lincoln Crowley labelled Birt the instigator who had “set off the chain of the events” over the “trivial” belief Ms Torrens had short-changed him on the drug transaction.
Despite attempts from intermediary Natalie Slattery to smooth things over by paying Birt some money herself for the apparent drug shortchanging, he still arranged for the group to go and confront Ms Torrens.
It was submitted Pascoe should get the highest sentence of the three lesser co-accused, with Crown prosecutor Greg Cummings saying it was “sheer good luck that no one was struck” when he let off his shotgun in the Anderson home.
Moffatt-Cleary had only been there to “back up his brother” and wasn’t involved in any physical violence, the court was told. All three had drug issues.
Justice Crowley said Mr Anderson was an “innocent man caught up in all of this”.
They were each discharged of the charge of murder after they agreed to assist in the trial against Moffatt.
Moffatt will be sentenced on Tuesday.
Originally published as Larkin Dwayne Moffatt, 25, found guilty of manslaughter over shooting death of Chris Anderson
