Moments before another lengthy jail term, the arsonist who set the home of a popular YouTuber on fire has apologised from \u201cthe bottom of my heart\u201d.<\/p>\n
Jordan Shanks \u2013 better known by his online alias of FriendlyJordies \u2013 had been making videos about Sydney<\/a> identities when arsonists set upon his Bondi residence in 2022.<\/p>\n The front veranda and door were destroyed, the bedroom and hallway damaged, and smoke damage occurred to the neighbour\u2019s property.<\/p>\n Shanks was not at home at the time.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n One of the men behind the 23 November attack, Tufi Junior Tauese-Auelua, was jailed for five years on Monday.<\/p>\n He expressed remorse during a sentence hearing at Coffs Harbour district court.<\/p>\n \u201cI would just like to apologise from the bottom of my heart,\u201d the 39-year-old said via video link from Nowra prison.<\/p>\n Telling the court he believed in God, he said he was over his life of crime after spending so much of his 20s and 30s behind bars.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d rather die than return back to jail,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The group used a stolen Mercedes with cloned plates for the arson attack and surveilled Shanks\u2019 home before pouring petrol at three separate locations.<\/p>\n The YouTuber later pulled down a video after saying people were \u201conce again threatening dire consequences\u201d if it remained online.<\/p>\n Police at the time of the attack suggested a south-west Sydney-based organised crime group, reported to be the Alameddine gang, were behind the attack.<\/p>\n \u201cYou win, we\u2019re taking down the video, congratulations, you run this city,\u201d Shanks said in February 2024.<\/p>\n The motive for the Shanks arson attack was not detailed in court, nor were any details released about what Tauese-Auelua personally gained from his involvement.<\/p>\n Tauese-Auelua has not been accused of being an Alameddine gang member.<\/p>\n The 39-year-old pleaded guilty to destroying property by fire in company and reckless wounding in a separate for-hired attack in 2022.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n In that matter, a man whose relationship with a property developer had broken down was set upon by Tauese-Auelua and others with baseball bats.<\/p>\n Judge Michael McHugh jailed Tauese-Auelua for five years, noting the 39-year-old criminal history contained \u201clots of violence\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s being used as muscle for third parties to \u2026 harm others,\u201d McHugh said.<\/p>\n The judge found Tauese-Auelua had a significant level of insight into his conduct but noted he had poor prospects of rehabilitation.<\/p>\n He has been diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and antisocial personality disorder.<\/p>\n The defence barrister, Alex Cassels, described his client as \u201ca little boy in a very large body\u201d.<\/p>\n With 15 months in custody already served, Tauese-Auelua will be eligible for parole in July 2027.<\/p>\n Prosecutors on Friday dropped the case against a second man charged over the 2022 arson attack due to insufficient evidence.<\/p>\n At a bail hearing in October 2023, Andre Stepanyan\u2019s lawyer said there was nothing to show he was in the vehicle travelling to Shanks\u2019 home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Moments before another lengthy jail term, the arsonist who set the home of a popular YouTuber on fire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-177177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}