An aboriginal man with a long history of domestic violence has been jailed for brutally beating and stomping his much younger wife to death in the Northern Territory.
Braden Jentian, 38, was found guilty of murder by a jury last month, and on Tuesday was sentenced by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Brownhill to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 21 years and six months.
Jentian’s victim, a 22-year-old woman referred to as Ms Ashley in court for “cultural reasons” who weighed just 43kg, was found dead with horrific injuries on the concrete slab where the couple had been sleeping on in a vacant lot in Katherine in 2024.
Ms Ashley suffered 17 broken ribs, bite marks on her face, a broken septum, had her two front teeth knocked out, and died of multiple injuries consistent with being hit and stomped on, including bleeding on the brain and heart damage, ABC News reported.
Justice Brownhill said in sentencing the pair had been drinking for hours at local pubs before arguing at the slab, and that after the murder Jentian laid his wife’s body on a blanket and yelled out that she was dead.
Justice Brownhill also noted that Jentian had a “lengthy and considerable” history of violence against Ms Ashley, resulting in four aggravated assault convictions, and sentenced him for two other aggravated assaults committed in the months leading up to the murder.
One one occasion Jentian punched Ms Ashley and knocked her to the ground during an argument while they were drinking around a fire, repeatedly hit her with a metal bar, stabbed her with a screwdriver and hit her with a glass bottle.
During another attack in Malak eight weeks before the murder he stomped on her face and body 10 times, breaking her shoulder blade, knocked her unconscious with a mobile phone, and bit into her cheek.
Jentian also had five other aggravated assault convictions against other people, including former partners.
Justice Brownhill found Jentian was unlikely to be rehabilitated, even by 20 years in custody, and would present a risk of further domestic violence offending after being released.
“Given the protracted and highly brutal nature of the murder of your domestic partner while you were intoxicated and she was vulnerable, I consider that the seriousness of the offending does extend beyond the mid-range for such offences and that the seriousness of the offence warrants a longer non-parole period,” she said.
“The assaults were protracted, you were not dissuaded by the efforts of witnesses, you caused significant harm to the deceased, and those experiences must have been extremely frightening and distressing for the deceased.”
Header image: Braden Jentian (Facebook).
The post Aboriginal monster jailed for life for stomping wife to death in outback town first appeared on The Noticer.
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