By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A Doveton home invader who helped severely bash a resident unconscious in their Lynbrook home has been jailed.
Danny Simic, 41, pleaded guilty at the Victorian County Court to aggravated burglary, causing injury intentionally and theft.
The victim discovered Simic and Le in his home about 5.30pm on 17 March 2021.
He was struck from behind with a baseball bat four times by Simic’s then-partner Dam Le, including once to the head.
The man was then punched and kicked on the ground until he lost consciousness.
He woke up in a pool of his own blood, with his phone and keys stolen.
The victim managed to get next door to alert triple-0. He was taken to hospital with four broken ribs and a collapsed lung.
Simic didn’t personally know the victim, who was an ex-partner of Le’s friend.
In sentencing on 14 September, Judge Stewart Bayles said the victim outlined the attack’s “significant” impacts on his life.
It was an aggravating feature that the beaten victim was deprived of his phone to call for help.
Judge Bayles found that at the time, Simic was likely afflicted by a long-standing psychiatric condition but it was aggravated by drug use.
Growing up in Hallam, Simic’s childhood was marred by a violent, heavy-drinking father and drug abuse. It was “not difficult” to causally link the two factors, Judge Bayles noted.
He used heroin and amphetamines from the age of 13.
As a child, he was diagnosed with ADHD but wasn’t medicated until a decade later.
He’d been admitted several times to psychiatric hospitals with schizophrenia and put on community treatment orders.
For nearly 20 years, the father-of-one had been unemployed and on a disability pension.
Despite his “guarded” rehabilitation prospects, his parole period would be designed to help him reform and reintegrate with the community, Judge Bayles said.
Judge Bayles took into account Simic’s lesser role in the assault. Le, who had been armed with the bat, had earlier been jailed for five years, and eligible for parole in three years.
Simic was jailed for four-and-a-half years, with a two-year, eight-month non-parole period.
His term includes 413 days in pre-sentence detention.
