By Cam Lucadou-Wells
An ice user who shot a family friend visiting his Kooweerup farm has been jailed.
Liam Billy King, 33, pleaded guilty at the Victorian County Court to several violent offences including recklessly causing serious injury, property damage and being a prohibited person with a firearm.
He was also charged with possessing an anabolic steroid.
In sentencing on 7 July, Judge Gabriele Cannon said the father-of-one had acted in an “outrageous” and “unhinged” manner subjecting people to frightening behaviour and serious injury.
Hours before the shooting, he’d earlier broken a man’s arm with a baseball bat at the family friend’s house in Clyde on 12 August 2019.
The victim had earlier asked King and his partner to stop arguing.
The victim used his forearm to fend off the bat, which King aimed at the victim’s head.
Later that night, the family friend – referred by King as like an ‘uncle’ – arrived at King’s home to discuss the attack.
Hearing someone on the driveway, King walked outside and fired a .22-calibre longarm.
He later said that he’d thought the victim was one of his “enemies”, Judge Cannon noted.
At short distance, the bullet passed through the victim’s chest and liver and lodged in his back.
King and his partner decided against an ambulance – at the victim’s request, King claimed. Instead, they drove the man from Kooweerup back to the Clyde house.
Two men without medical training tried to treat the victim. One of them searched online how to best treat a gunshot injury.
About an hour later they drove the victim to Casey Hospital. He was transferred to The Alfred Hospital ICU with significant internal bleeding.
In a victim impact statement, the once healthy and outgoing victim outlined the “dreadful course” of his life, Judge Cannon said.
While lucky to have survived, he at times wished he hadn’t lived. He felt more like an 80-year-old than a man of 62, could no longer work and depended on financial support.
At the time, King was labouring under bipolar disorder, which was worsened by taking meth – though not on the night of the shooting, Judge Cannon noted.
He was reportedly hallucinating, paranoid, and hadn’t slept for days.
King was also charged over lashing out at two McDonald’s outlets in Berwick and Berwick South early on 2 March 2019.
About 4.15am, at Berwick, he smashed the drive-through’s window with a baseball bat.
He’d been enraged that some of his ordered items were unavailable.
Five minutes earlier, he’d kicked and damaged a woman’s car doors at Berwick South after finding the restaurant was closed.
At the time, he was on his medication which made his offending “most concerning”, Judge Cannon said.
King’s criminal history included jail for a violent aggravated burglary of a friend’s house during an ‘ice’ binge, trafficking ‘ice’ and exploding a home-made pipe bomb under a man’s car.
He also had a long history of substance abuse, particularly ice.
His mental illness and deprived background reduced his culpability, the judge said. On the other hand, she put strong weight on protecting the community.
King’s challenge was to stay on medication, seek counselling and keep off drugs, or facing ever-increasing stints in jail, the judge said.
King was jailed for up to four-and-a-half years, with a non-parole period of three years.
The term included 922 days already served in pre-sentence detention.
