Four teenagers accused of luring a man to a suburban train station and allegedly fatally stabbing him have been taken into custody after their bail was revoked.<\/p>\n
Jack Westren, 25, died after he was stabbed near Shellharbour Junction Station in January.<\/p>\n
One 13-year-old boy, two 14-year-old boys and a 16-year-old girl, all of whom cannot be named, appeared in Port Kembla Children’s Court on Tuesday charged with murder and affray.<\/p>\n
A count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm was withdrawn for each young person, while Mr Westren’s parents watched proceedings via audio visual link.<\/p>\n
The court heard the teens were among eight people charged in relation to the victim’s death. A 38-year-old woman and two 16-year-old boys facing a murder charge are already in custody, and a 13-year-old girl has been charged with affray and assault.<\/p>\n
Each young person in court on Tuesday sat quietly alongside family and at times held back tears, as the detention applications were made.<\/p>\n
The Crown prosecutor argued the recent upgrading of charges and new evidence meant they were seeking to revoke the children’s bail.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor said there were concerns the teens would fail to appear before court and that witnesses could be at risk.<\/p>\n
Attack planned, Crown alleges<\/p>\n
The court was told details of the alleged circumstances leading up to the attack, in bail submissions made for one of the 14-year-old boys.<\/p>\n
Magistrate Cathy Tawagi told the court Mr Westren lived with an acquired brain injury, was “socially inept” and known to “message girls on social media asking them to be his girlfriend”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Jack was persuaded to communicate with [one of the 14-year-old male] co-accused, who pretended to be a girl he thought was his girlfriend named Amy,” Magistrate Tawagi said.<\/p>\n
“The messages continued, discussing sexual activity in the bathroom of Shellharbour shopping centre, which then changed to the local train station.”<\/p>\n
The court was told the day before Mr Westren’s death, that same 14-year-old boy allegedly proposed “to bash a paedophile” in a social media group chat made by another teenager, using his teenage female co-accused as “bait”.<\/p>\n
A shopping centre security camera allegedly captured a group of teenagers inside a stairwell on January 28, including the same 14-year-old boy and his 13-year-old male co-accused carrying a knife.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The alleged murder occurred near Shellharbour Junction train station.\u00a0 (ABC Illawarra: Tim Fernandez)<\/p>\n
Magistrate Tawagi said it was then alleged 38-year-old Tamara Lee Doust, also before the courts, drove the group to the local train station to meet Mr Westren, and that a knife and knuckle dusters were passed among some members lying in the car boot.<\/p>\n
The court heard the 16-year-old girl allegedly jumped out of the vehicle, telling the group, “Only I am supposed to meet him”, but was followed by the group, who attacked Mr Westren.<\/p>\n
Madame Crown said the ordeal was filmed and allegedly captured one of the 14-year-old boys yelling “f***ing stabbed the c***”, before the group fled.<\/p>\n
Judge concerned with witness interference<\/p>\n
The defence lawyers for each of the four teenagers argued bail conditions such as house arrest and a phone ban could mitigate the Crown’s concerns of witness interference.<\/p>\n
However, the court heard the two 14-year-old male co-accused had breached pre-existing bail conditions \u2014 one of which included alleged domestic violence.<\/p>\n
“It is my view there is an unacceptable risk of endangering other young people who were there that day or others who may be called in as witnesses,” Magistrate Tawagi said.<\/p>\n
“It’s too difficult for police to monitor the young people’s phone usage.”<\/p>\n
The mother of one of the 14-year-old boys told officers, “Take care of him”, as her son was guided out of the court.<\/p>\n
Charges of murder and weapons possession were also certified for one of the 16-year-old boys allegedly involved, who appeared via audio visual link from custody.<\/p>\n
Magistrate Tawagi said she treated each of the four accused who appeared in court on Tuesday “consistently” in denying their bail applications.<\/p>\n
A case conference between all legal parties will be held next month, with the matter to return to court in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four teenagers accused of luring a man to a suburban train station and allegedly fatally stabbing him have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,146314,44,146317,146316,146315,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-246182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-jack-westren","tag-news","tag-port-kembla-childrens-court","tag-shellharbour-station","tag-teenager-fatal-stabbing","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246182","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=246182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}