Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following story may contain images, voices, and video of people who have died.
Two men have been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Indigenous teenager Cassius Turvey, who was chased into bushland and bashed with a metal pole on 13 October 2022.
He died in hospital 10 days after he was deliberately struck on the head while walking home from school in Perth’s eastern suburbs.
Last month, Jack Steven James Brearley, 24, and Brodie Lee Palmer, 29, were convicted of murdering the 15-year-old. Mitchell Colin Forth, 27, was found guilty of manslaughter.
On Friday, Palmer and Brearley were both sentenced to life imprisonment. Palmer must serve a minimum non-parole period of at least 18 years while Jack Brearley will serve a life sentence with a minimum period without parole of 22 years, as reported by ABC News.
Forth was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for his part in Cassius’s death, stealing a boy’s crutches, and abducting and assaulting two teenagers.
Handing down the judgement, Chief Justice Peter Quinlan stating there were no mitigating factors for the seriousness of Palmer’s crimes, other than his behaviour in court, per the publication.
Addressing Brearley, he stated: “I find that you have no remorse whatsoever.”
During the 12-week trial, which concluded last month, the jury heard the attack on Cassius was “the end point of a complex series of events that had absolutely nothing to do with him”.
Turvey, who was chased into bushland by the men, was bashed with the metal handle of a broken shopping trolley. The court heard the men believed he was part of a group responsible for smashing the windows on Brearley’s car in the days prior.
In a victim impact statement read out to the court on Thursday, Cassius’ mother Mechelle Turvey described her grief as “immeasurable” as she stated the crime had impacted the wider community.
“The community, once a place of safety and trust now lives under a shadow of fear and uncertainty,” she said, per the Sydney Morning Herald.
“The actions of the accused have torn at the very fabric of society and will take years decades if not lifetimes to heal and recover.
“My son was a respected, bright, loving and compassionate individual whose life was tragically cut short by a vigilante set of adults who took the law into their own hands.”
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