The piece of shit that is Dante Arthurs

Dodgy looking character isn’t he?

Dante Wyndham Arthurs, 23, was sentenced yesterday to life in jail, with a minimum non-parole period of 13 years, for the murder of eight-year-old Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia-Shu in a shopping centre toilet cubicle last year.

The facts of what he did are chilling.

He strangled her, stripped her and digitally penetrated her before propping her body against the cubicle wall and fleeing.  The court heard it was an opportunistic bid to touch the girl sexually when she appeared at the toilet door as Arthurs was leaving.  According to a psychologist giving evidence:

“He has described to me and medical practitioners it was like he was watching someone else doing it,” Mr Richardson said.

He said Arthurs admitted wanting to touch the girl sexually but denied wanting to kill her.

Arthurs recalled seeing his hands around a throat and panicked when he noticed bruising around the girl’s eyes and neck, and that she had stopped breathing.

He tried to revive her with mouth to mouth resuscitation and shook her violently when she did not respond.

“I tried to shake a response from her, then her arms broke,” Arthurs told him.

“I heard a large snapping noise.”

Mr Richardson said Sofia’s legs hit the toilet before Arthurs dropped her to the floor.

“He watched himself go across to her to remove her clothing and insert one finger into the vagina. He noticed there was blood.”

Prosecutor Sam Vandongen said Sofia’s upper arms and shins were fractured, and she had significant bruising and lacerations in the ano-genital area.

And it looked like Arthurs was a serious serial pedophile, or at least starting out on a career as one - police found a bag containing latex gloves, handcuffs, a small knife and rope, along with a collection of pictures of young girls when they searched his home.  Plus he had form on the board it seems, but a case against him for a 2003 assault on another 8 year old girl fell apart due to police incompetence.

There has been criticism of the sentence Arthurs received …13 years before he is eligible for parole, at the still relatively young age of 36.  According to WA attorney general, Jim McGinty:

“Such a brutal shocking murder I think most people thought deserved a longer non-parole period than 13 years,”

“At the moment the judge’s hands are tied, he could give no more than 14 years non-parole period because of the archaic nature of our laws.”

He also said a Law Reform Commission report has recommended changes to the State’s murder laws, including amalgamating the two homicide categories of wilful murder and the less serious charge of murder. If these changes were in place now, Justice McKechnie would have been able to rule that Arthurs never be released, or sentence him to a non-parole period of 30 years.

Hey, Mr McGinty, who’s job was it to push these laws through parliament?  Perhaps if you’d pulled your finger out a bit sooner those laws would have been in place for Arthurs to be subjected to?

Anyway, he has made his position clear on the subject of Arthurs’ fate:

“It was a light sentence and it will be up to the attorney-general of the day as to whether he is released or not.”

I suspect that 13 years will prove much longer than Arthurs’ life in prison lasts.