A Victorian man who was on drugs when he killed his friend, using a double-barrelled shotgun he thought was not loaded, has been sentenced to 11 years' prison.
John Nelis, 38, took the party drug GHB before he shot 39-year-old Christopher Jacobs in a caravan in Geelong on July 4, 2020.
Nelis arrived at the caravan in the early hours of the morning with the gun in a bag, and others thought he planned to swap or sell the weapon to his good friend.
He saw Mr Jacobs was wearing a bulletproof vest, but it had not been properly fitted out with anti-ballistic panels.
Nelis pointed the shotgun at Mr Jacobs' chest and abdomen, and fired without checking to see if it was loaded.
Mr Jacobs fell to the floor clutching his stomach, and a witness saw Nelis standing before him holding the smoking gun.
"Are you all right bro?" he asked.
"I didn't know it was full - it wasn't meant to be loaded," Nelis said.
He then left the scene and disposed of his weapon, before taking even more GHB and heroin at a friend's house, where he saw on the television news that his friend had died.
He managed to hide from police in regional Victoria for 20 days before his arrest.
In October 2021, facing a Supreme Court trial, he pleaded guilty to negligent manslaughter.
Justice Lex Lasry said Nelis' failure to help his friend, knowing he was in real trouble, did him no credit, and his actions had had a devastating impact on those closest to Mr Jacobs.
He told Nelis that any hopes for rehabilitation were almost completely dependent on whether he could break his drug addiction.
"It is beyond me to find words that will have any effect on people who use drugs of the kind that you used. Drugs are ruining your life," Justice Lasry told him.
Nelis will serve a non-parole period of eight years.
