A psychotic African thug who bashed two strangers on a train and another man in the street on the day he was let out of a Victorian mental health ward while out on bail for assault and robbery could spend just 12 months behind bars for the horrific attack.
Tafadzwa Mhindurwa, 24, who has New Zealand citizenship was last week sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with one year non-parole period in Bendigo Magistrates Court after pleading guilty to a raft of assault and robbery charges over unprovoked November 2024 attacks.
Defence lawyer Daniel Ajak argued his client, who had spent 260 days in jail on remand, should be released into a residential rehab facility so he could avoid deportation, which is automatically triggered by a custodial sentence of one year or more, The Bendigo News reported.
Mr Ajak said spending more time in jail would make his mental health worse, but Magistrate Trieu Hunyh refused the application for a sentence deferral, noting Mhindurwa had offended repeatedly after being given therapeutic orders.
He said he would have sentenced Mhindurwa to 28 months behind bars with a 16-month non-parole period if he had not pleaded guilty, and the court heard that a psychologist said that a high level of intervention was needed due to “future risk of violence”.
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 the June hearing 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).
