A man has died in hospital six days after he was allegedly brutally bashed and stomped on by a released African immigration detainee in the crime-ravaged Melbourne suburb of Footscray.
Dominic O’Brien, 62, was taken to hospital on Sunday with critical injuries suffered in the unprovoked alleged attack by Zimbabwean man Lominja Friday Yokoju, 43, who was among hundreds of criminal immigrants spared deportation by Labor after a controversial court ruling in 2023.
Yokoju was charged with intentionally cause serious injury, but Victoria Police said on Saturday that investigators will consider alternate charges following the results of a post-mortem.
Police allege Yokoju approached Mr O’Brien at 10am on June 15, struck him, and stomped on his head while he was on the ground near the intersection on Nicholson and Paisley Streets.
A witness told The Age Australian Border Force officers on their way to update Yokoju’s ankle bracelet turned up to see the alleged attack in progress.
“The other guy kept stomping on the victim’s face and didn’t stop until the Australian Border Force happened to pass by and intervened,” the witness said.
Yokoju, who was on bail at the time of the alleged attack and is understood to be on a bridging visa, faced Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday where the court heard Mr O’Brien was yet to stabilise and unlikely to survive.
He did not apply for bail, and will return to court on October 20.
Following his release from Yongah Hill Detention Centre in Perth in November 2023, after the High Court ruled that a “stateless” Rohingya child rapist could not be held in indefinite detention, Yokoju claimed he was a victim of discrimination and did not commit the domestic violence offence he was locked up for.
“The racism has to stop,” he told The West Australian.
“It’s not supposed to happen, let it go. I did my time — seven times over.
“I’ve seen White people go to prison for drugs, spend a few months there and then get out. Everybody else goes to hell.”
Yokoju, who spent six years in detention after serving a sentence of longer than one year, said he just wanted to work and live his life, but he was later charged with breaching his ankle monitoring and curfew conditions.
Those charges were dropped in November last year after another High Court ruling that the conditions were unconstitutional, the Herald Sun reported.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke refused to comment on Yokoju’s case after the alleged attack, but Coalition spokesman Andrew Hastie said the alleged attack was a “preventable tragedy” and the government had not applied to keep a single freed detainee behind bars despite their violent histories.
“And now, we have an innocent person gravely injured by someone who [allegedly] should have been deported by the Albanese government,” Mr Hastie said.
“What is Tony Burke doing? Why didn’t he exercise preventative detention powers? Why is he so passive in protecting our community? These questions need to be answered by the Home Affairs Minister.”
Header image: Lominja Friday Yokoju (Facebook).
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