One of the African males charged over an alleged home invasion that shocked Melbourne last month was roaming free after being cleared of murdering teenager Declan Cutler due to being too young to be held criminally responsible.
Police on Wednesday arrested five youths over the Gladstone Park home invasion where Kemal Akbulut, 60, was allegedly shot, stabbed and bashed with a hammer, and allege one of the attackers was a 16-year-old involved in the savage killing of Cutler, The Age reported.
The teenager was among eight African gang members who stabbed and bashed Cutler, 16, leaving him dead of 56 sharp-force injuries, 30 puncture wounds and 66 blunt-force injuries, in Reservoir in March 2022.
Supreme Court Justice Rita Incerti found the teenager, who cannot be named because of his age, not guilty of murder and manslaughter during a judge-only trial in September 2023, even though he was facing 44 prior charges at the time and told police and experts that he “knew murder was wrong”.
“A review of the evidence in its entirety leaves open a reasonable possibility that at the time of the offence, [he] did not know that his conduct was seriously wrong in a moral sense,” Justice Incerti said in her judgement.
The teenager was released from custody after the weeks-long trial but is now back behind bars after being charged with 14 offences including aggravated home invasion with a firearm, intentionally cause serious injury, and reckless conduct endanger life.
He did not apply for bail and will face a children’s court at a later date.
Shocking CCTV footage of the home invasion shows Akbulut allegedly being repeatedly stabbed, brutally bashed with a hammer and shot in the arm.
Akbulut was taken to hospital with serious injuries, and a 57-year-old also present at the home was allegedly threatened but not physically hurt.
The unprovoked murder of Cutler, who was not in a gang and did not know his killers, sparked outrage around Australia, and in July last year four African gang members were sentenced to nearly two decades in jail each after being found guilty of murder during a month-long trial in front of Justice Incerti.
Another then-16-year-old was jailed for 15 years after pleading guilty to murder, and two others, both 18, were sentenced to 3.5 and 4 years in juvenile detention respectively after pleading guilty to manslaughter and intentionally causing serious injury.
Header image: Left, the home invasion (Outlaw Media). Right, Akbulut’s injuries (supplied).
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