A psychotic African thug who was jailed for just one year for bashing three strangers in a violent rampage on the day he was released from a mental health ward in Bendigo while out on bail for assault and robbery has lost his bid to avoid deportation.
Tafadzwa Mhindurwa, 24, who has New Zealand citizenship, launched an appeal in the County Court of Victoria on Wednesday in order to try and avoid the automatic visa cancellation that comes with a sentence of one year or more.
Prosecutor David Cordy said Mhindurwa, who has already spent 304 in custody, should be refused a community corrections order as it would be “totally inadequate”, and called him the “author of his own doom”, the Herald Sun reported.
Judge Kevin Doyle found that Magistrate Trieu Hunyh’s sentence of two year’s imprisonment with a 12-month non-parole period was appropriate, and Mhindurwa is now likely to be put into immigration detention when he is eligible for parole on December 21.
“I’m prepared to accept that moral culpability is reduced to an extent [by Mhindurwa’s mental health issues], but on the other hand, these are very serious random attacks on the public,” Judge Doyle said.
Mhindurwa would have been jailed for much longer had he not pleaded guilty to a raft of assault and robbery charges over unprovoked November 2024 attacks on a couple of a train and a man in the street, Magistrate Hunyh said in sentencing earlier this year.
A psychotic African thug who bashed two strangers on a train on the day he was released from a Victorian mental health ward has been jailed for just one year. pic.twitter.com/2RVNVZpFtE
— The Noticer (@NoticerNews) September 16, 2025
Victoria Police video of the first attack shows Mhindurwa, who had been released from the Bendigo Health adult mental health ward earlier that day, sitting near his first victim and his wife on the 7.52pm V/Line train before launching into a sickening and prolonged assault.
An earlier court hearing was told Mhindurwa had earlier questioned the couple about whether they were Catholics and then asked the man if his “glasses were prescription”.
He then punched the man multiple times in the face and head, causing bruising and heavy bleeding, while his wife looked on in horror and at times tried in vain to stop the attack.
The train CCTV then shows the Mhindurwa stealing an umbrella from the woman before storming through the train carriages.
The violent thug then got off the train at Kangaroo Flat station and ran to Camp Street where he started a conversation with his second victim before swinging the umbrella at him.
Mhindurwa then asked his victim for a selfie and punched him in the face, breaking his nose and causing it to bleed profusely.
A witness took a photo of the 23-year-old and chased him towards High Street, and when police caught up with him he was covered in the blood of his victims, both of whom needed hospital treatment.
Mhindurwa had been sentenced to six months’ jail for unlawful assault and attempted robbery on September 12, 2024, and was granted appeal bail on October 1 before being admitted to the mental health ward on October 23.
During a hearing in June the defence argued Mhindurwa’s attack was “clearly an episode of paranoid schizophrenia”, but police prosecutors said he had failed to comply with mental health treatment and abused meth and cannabis.
One of Mhindurwa’s victims said he suffered psychological trauma that “ran deep”, while the other said he now “lived in fear” and was too frightened to leave his home by himself.
Header image: Left, right, Mhindurwa during the first attack (Victoria Police).
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