Beach cricket murder

William Rowe was participating in a most Australian activity on Christmas Day – playing cricket on the beach with his extended family.  However, a pack of thugs intervened and beat him over the head with his cricket bat, killing him.

Within a day, reports were that the thugs had been helping themselves to drinks from his family’s esky and he told them off.  An argument followed, and shortly afterwards the thugs returned with about 25 of their mates, and things turned into some sort of a brawl, with bottles thrown and one of Mr Rowe’s family being slashed with a broken beer bottle (serious enough to need 35 stitches) and having his jaw and collarbone broken.  Mr Rowe and other members of his family were taking the injured man to their car to drive him to hospital when the fatal blow was struck on Mr Rowe with his cricket bat.

A 21 year old man, Mathew Roy McDonald, later surrendered to police and has been charged (so far) with causing grievous bodily harm.  A second man, aged 45, has also been charged over his part in the brawl (but apparently nothing to do with the death of Mr Rowe or the injuries to his family member).  According to police, other people have been brought in by their families over their involvement in the brawl.

Now what has been barely said or even hinted at in the media is that the thugs were all aborigines.  Given the nature of Western Australia, particularly its country towns, this is not at all unexpected or indeed particularly surprising.  Whether the attackers are aboriginal, white, Asian, African or whatever is not really that important.  What I don’t like is the apparent censorship in reporting.  Again we have media outlets suppressing, or at least blurring, their reporting.  Why?  Can’t we handle the fact that there are groups of aborigines who behave appallingly (or groups of moslems, or other racial/religious groups)?   The first hint I could find of the perpetrator’s aboriginality was in his uncle’s statement:

“Our family, with the help of the Aboriginal Legal Service, in the new year will make an official statement on behalf of the family and until that time we just want the media to respect our privacy,”

Very much like the case of the murder of Andrew Farrugia in Griffith on New Year’s Eve last year.  Pussyfooting around by the media when it was fairly obvious from the outset who the criminals were.  I think we are entitled to be informed about the bad behaviour of different groups in Australia, whether they be aborigines in Geraldton, Lebanese in Lakemba or whites in Cronulla.  Suppressing their identity for reasons of political correctness, or wanting to avoid being accused of racism, serves nobody well.  It denies to the communities from which these dickheads come that they have a publicly acknowledged problem in their midst and it denies the broader community knowledge which I think we are entitled to know.

I’ve seen nothing yet in the Fairfax media or ABC which references the fact that the thugs that attacked and killed Mr Rowe were aborigines.  The West Australian has been more forthcoming about it, with a version of events from a family friend of the Rowe’s, which clearly identifies the problem group as aborigines.  His version of events was reported as below.

When the temperature started to cool after 6pm on Christmas Day, the Rowes had headed to the beach for a game of cricket. It is understood a group of Aboriginals had been lingering on the beach for some time, rummaging through eskies for alcohol, intimidating families and causing some to leave. But the Rowes stayed, confident they had safety in numbers and the situation would settle down. After Mr Neil was bashed, the Rowe family were trying desperately to rush him to hospital but were suddenly surrounded by a group of up to 25, including women and children as young as 12, in the beach carpark.  Mr Morrissey said Mrs Rowe tried to reason with the group and defuse the situation. “She said something like ‘you get your family and go and I’ll get mine and go’,” he said. It is believed a woman in the group called the family “white c…s” and said they were in for a bashing. It is understood that members of the offending group were about to attack an injured Mr Neil again, when Mr Rowe stepped in but was hit once from behind.

Lovely!  Now what sort of person thinks that hitting someone in the head with a cricket bat is an acceptable way to handle an argument, or slashing someone with a broken bottle.  These sort of behaviours are just totally unacceptable and should be treated as such by the law.  No amount of impairment by drugs or alcohol, or provocation, or an underprivileged background, excuses them.  The person who does this sort of violence makes a free choice and needs to pay the consequences of their actions …. there are simply no mitigating circumstances …. they make the choice to use a potentially deadly weapon, there is a risk of death, it happens, it should be murder, no excuses (and in my books young murderers should not see the outside of a jail until they are old and infirm).  However, I’m absolutely sure that in this case, all sorts of things like the accused’s background, him being drunk or stoned, being overtaken by a mob mentality, will be trotted out in his defence.  As I’ve said, he hit a man on the head with a cricket bat …. it doesn’t exactly take a huge amount of intellect to figure the damage that could do, so he clearly intended great harm to Mr Rowe, and should be punished as such (severely).  Regardless of all the other factors at play, at the end of the day, he chose freely to be a violent, evil shit.  His choice, nobody else’s!

PS:

I mentioned the Andrew Farrugia murder earlier.   The legals and reporting around this are bullshit.   His killers were identified by the court and in the reporting of the case as only CK and TS.  They got 6 year sentences for manslaughter, and with parole etc are likely to be out of jail by the time they are 19 or 20.  Thats just wrong!  These evil turds completely deny an innocent stranger his life, and screw up his family and friends’ lives, but essentially are given a slap over the wrist and basically get to enjoy their adulthood uninterrupted (at least theoretically, no doubt they will spend much time in jail for crimes they commit once out of jail for this killing).  I’ve said before, I think youths who commit major league adult crimes should be treated as adults in the justice system.  By committing big boys crimes, I believe they forfeit their childhood and need to take full adult responsibility for their actions.  At present, they are treated as children, instead of as violent thugs, and will be out of jail almost as soon as they are adults, with no-one else knowing who they are or what they did.  And what of the judge’s tough talk and little action in the sentencing:

“entirely senseless, unprovoked and callous”.

“That they could deliberately inflict harm upon another young man who like them, had family waiting at home to see him, a future to look forward to, a life full of promise, for absolutely no reason at all beggars belief.”

4 years for that is a joke.  Try adding a zero on the end, and its in the right ballpark.