An immigrant gang member who attacked a young man with a machete at a Melbourne shopping centre has been sentenced to just six months in youth detention after claiming he was responding to “racist bullying”.
The now-18-year-old, who cannot be identified as he was a minor at the time of his crimes, pleaded guilty to violent disorder, affray, and assault with a weapon over the horrific gang attack outside the Vanilla Lounge at Eaton Mall in Oakleigh on April 17, and another brutal assault nine days earlier.
The foreign thug hacked at his victim’s head with a machete, leaving the 18-year-old with a fractured skull and lifelong scars, but will be due for release next month with time served, the Herald Sun reported.
Footage of the attack: pic.twitter.com/jUjBmN74Xa
— N News (@NoticerNews) September 16, 2026
A lawyer for the attacker told a children’s court on Thursday his client, who is in Australia on a student visa, was the victim of “highly offensive racial slurs” at his private school, and had been slashed in a machete attack in Mordialloc in November last year.
“Those incidents of racial bullying only came to an end when he asserted himself physically,” the lawyer told the court.
The lawyer said his client “felt it was up to him to bring an end to the racist bullying” because the school did not intervene, and that members of rival gang the South Side Gangsters (SSG) had taunted the teenager about his machete scars.
The court also heard the teen, who a court previously heard was a member of the 71 gang, claimed he took it upon himself to get revenge because police did not lay charges when he was injured.
The court heard the teenager was the ringleader in two attacks, the first at Oakleigh Central on April 8, where he recognised a 15-year-old who was present at the Mordialloc stabbing and bashed the younger boy with a fishing pole along with 12 others.
Then on April 17 he and 15 others approached a group of young people sitting at the dessert bar, asked “are any of you SSG?” and then unleashing a savage assault on the 18-year-old victim.
He later told police he was “just mad … I remember getting stabbed back at Mordi” and that “there was no intention” in the attack.
Children’s Court president Judge Jack Vandersteen convicted him of seven charges and sentenced him to six months in youth detention with a 12-month youth supervision order.
His student visa may now be cancelled.
Header image: Left, right, the Oakleigh machete attack (supplied).
