Drug heist double murderer jailed 35 years
Liz Hobday |
A Victorian man who killed two men in a failed drug heist has been jailed for 35 years.
Clapping was heard in the Supreme Court as Justice Andrew Tinney sentenced Norden Wilio, 26, over the attempted robbery and shootings in March 2019, and said the community had to be protected from him.
Wilio and his friend Ali Ali, 28, had planned to rob a car boot load of marijuana worth about $7000 from a dealer, 40-year-old Deniz Hasan, in the Melbourne suburb of Meadow Heights.
Mr Hasan had thought the pair were going to buy drugs from him, but they instead dragged him from his car and a scuffle broke out.
Wilio, armed with a sawnoff shotgun, fatally shot Mr Hasan in the head from just metres away, and shot Mr Ali in the torso.
Wilio then put his dying friend in a shopping trolley and wheeled him about 800 metres away from the scene.
Justice Andrew Tinney said Wilio had left Hasan for dead, and took his mortally wounded friend Ali on an extraordinary and agonising journey, not to get help, but so he would not get caught by police.
He said Wilio’s moral culpability was high and it was impossible to disagree with the Crown’s submissions that the shooting of Mr Hasan was brutal, callous, particularly savage and totally unnecessary.
In December last year a Supreme Court jury found Wilio guilty of murdering both men, as well as attempted armed robbery.
Wilio had shown no remorse, Justice Tinney noted, and during his trial had falsely claimed his dead friend was responsible for his crimes and not him.
Justice Tinney also quoted from the victim impact statements of the dead men’s families, saying his crimes had caused them unbearable loss and sadness.
Mr Ali had died in the arms of an old friend, who said she felt a great loss and would never be able to forget his sudden and horrible death.
Mr Hasan’s mother said her son had left behind two young daughters of his own, and her family’s grief would remain with them forever.
Psychological analysis of Wilio while he was in custody showed he had a borderline mild intellectual disability and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and could not evaluate the risks of undertaking a drug heist.
But Justice Tinney rejected the evidence of the expert psychological witness who tested Wilio, because she had only carried out limited tests, and he said it was impossible to know what his actual IQ really was.
He also said Wilio had so far been imprisoned for three and a half years, with no prison visitors for more than two years due to measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Wilio will serve a non-parole period of 26 years.
AAP
