An African killer will be eligible for parole in just five years after being handed a light sentence for the murder of an unarmed Burmese teenager he stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife during a brawl at a bus interchange in Melbourne.
The Sudanese immigrant, who is now 19 but cannot be named since he was 17 at the time of the killing, in August pleaded guilty to the murder of refugee schoolboy Pasawm Lyhym, 16, in Sunshine on May 18, 2023, and intentionally causing injury to another teenager.
Victorian Supreme Court Justice Michael Croucher on Friday said he would hand down a sentence of 13 years’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of eight years, but recommended a period of youth detention and delayed official sentencing for a week to allow the Adult Parole Board time for consideration.
In sentencing Justice Croucher noted the devastation suffered by Lyhym’s loved ones, noting “their agony, I fear, will be lifelong”, but then said the murderer was “only a boy too”, and that he accepted that his intention was not to kill but “only to cause him really serious injury … impulsively and was only fleeting”.
The court heard that on the afternoon of the killing the murderer’s group, known as 4C but which Justice Croucher said was “not a gang”, ambushed a rival “group” called SEA made up of youths from South East Asia at Sunshine Plaza.
Two members of 4C had machetes, the killer had the murder weapon and was wearing a ski mask, and at least one member of SEA had a machete.
A fight broke out and Lyhym, who was friends with some members of SEA, saw them being chased and grabbed a shopping trolley to defend them and himself. He threw the trolley at his killer and ran away on foot, but the Sudanese teenager quickly caught up to him and stabbed him twice in the back.
Footage from Nine News shows the initial clash, followed by the stabbing, and CCTV shows the killer then running down a laneway and putting the knife into his backpack. He later took an Uber from the scene with some of his co-offenders.
Lyhym staggered back to the bus terminal where he collapsed and died at 3.59pm, despite the best efforts of paramedics and bystanders to save him.
The savage killing took place in front of horrified young children, and one eyewitness told police: “The young male probably made it no more than 20 metres before the male with the knife caught up with him and drove the blade of the knife into the young [male’s] back twice.
“Each time driving the blade … at least halfway into his back. I could see he was using such force [that] the blade could have gone right through him.
“After driving the knife into the young male for a second time, the tall male turned around and ran towards bay 7, where I was standing, still holding the knife in his right hand. I could see blood covering half the blade.”
Justice Croucher said in his judgement that the statement would not have been admissible at trial, and that the 2.8cm-deep non-fatal wound and the 14cm-deep fatal wound did not suggest the killer was “trying to drive the knife right through him”.
The court heard that the killer was born in Egypt to South Sudanese parents and that he arrived in Australia aged 11 months, and saw his father engaging in physical and verbal abuse against his mother.
He has since been diagnosed with PTSD related to the murder and witnessing childhood domestic violence, and experiences “nightmares, difficulty sleeping, flashbacks of the offence, and trouble getting distressing images out of his head”, according to a psychologist who also assessed his IQ as 79.
In sentencing, Justice Croucher accepted that the killer showed genuine remorse, and took into account his lack of prior convictions, his age, character references, and found he had “excellent prospects of rehabilitation” despite his repeated involvement in violent incidents while in youth detention.
The sentence was backdated to include time served, and the killer will be eligible for parole in May, 2030, when he will be 25.
“No good can come from carrying weapons like these. It just has to stop,” Justice Croucher said.
“All should also understand that any person who, with an intention to cause really serious injury, stabs an unarmed person to death with a knife, on a public street, usually will receive a substantial term of imprisonment for murder, even if that person is young and has excellent prospects of rehabilitation and/or other compelling mitigating factors.”
Header image: Left, the stabbing caught on camera. Right, Pasawm Lyhym (Facebook).
