By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A Casey Gardens caravan park resident has claimed he’s the “victim” after allegedly threatening his girlfriend and other residents at knifepoint at a boozy barbecue with neighbours.
The 45-year-old man – still wearing his dressing-gown – was refused bail at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on 7 May despite strenuously denying the alleged assaults and threats to kill.
“I’m not a bad person,” he repeatedly said.
“I’m a victim in this.”
The man had allegedly choked his girlfriend after they had allegedly attended a barbecue with neighbours at the caravan park on 6 May.
He told the court that they left the gathering after a neighbour made a sexual advance on his partner.
Police alleged he pushed her on a bed, and grabbed and squeezed her around the throat so she couldn’t breathe, Acting Sergeant Adrian Walker told the court.
“You better not leave me,” the man allegedly told her.
He produced a rope noose and threatened to make her watch him hang himself.
During the struggle, she was cut to her hand with the knife, police alleged.
Two other residents were threatened as he searched for his fleeing partner. The man held a knife to a resident’s face threatening him if he called police.
He had been arrested about 3am, found banging on a neighbour’s caravan door and looking for his girlfriend by police, Sgt Walker said.
The victims were “petrified” that if the man was released he’d go straight to their caravans and do “something terrible”.
The partner had never seen the man so angry in 20 years and believed he was regularly using ice, Sgt Walker said.
In court, the man denied using ice, challenged police to produce the alleged knife, and claimed the rope noose was in fact a clothesline.
He’d done the “right thing” since being released from jail in 2016, he said.
“I’m not a threat to the community. I’m not a threat to anybody.
“If I intended to harm anybody, I would have done it on the night.”
He told the court that he didn’t have any issues with these “great people”. They had enjoyed a “great barbecue” with “great fun”.
He accused them of fabricating a common story before police arrived.
The man promised not to have anything to do with the complainants and to “shut myself in my small van”, if released.
Magistrate Jack Vandersteen noted the man’s “very bad” criminal history including aggravated burglary and intentionally causing injury.
The prosecution case was not weak, Mr Vandersteen said.
Bail was refused because the risk of reoffending, interfering with witnesses and obstructing justice was too great, he said.
The man was remanded to appear at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on 21 May.
