{"id":788816,"date":"2026-07-09T08:42:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T08:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/788816\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T08:42:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T08:42:12","slug":"man-who-fatally-stabbed-housemate-found-not-criminally-responsible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/788816\/","title":{"rendered":"Man who fatally stabbed housemate found not criminally responsible"},"content":{"rendered":"

A court has found a man who fatally stabbed his housemate at Tweed Heads West in 2024 was not criminally responsible because he was unable to determine his actions were wrong.<\/p>\n

In the Supreme Court in Sydney, Justice Greg Sirtes said a special verdict was justified because the 25-year-old was suffering a mental health impairment and schizophrenic disorder.<\/p>\n

The court heard Connor Bullus had been living in the home of the 61-year-old woman for four months, but “snapped” when she refused to share her cannabis with him.<\/p>\n

The court heard a neighbour told police that Donna Baraket was known to help homeless people, and that some visitors to the house were “shady”.<\/p>\n

The neighbour said they heard the man yelling abuse at Ms Baraket several days before she was killed.<\/p>\n

\"Supreme<\/p>\n

The case was finalised today in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney. (ABC News: Jamie McKinnell)<\/p>\n

Justice Sirtes read details of a victim impact statement from a family member, who described her a happy, free-spirited person.<\/p>\n

The statement said Ms Baraket had been a carer for her mother for 10 years, and her death had left the elderly woman alone.<\/p>\n

The court heard Mr Bullus had attended an appointment with a social worker on the day of the murder, and told them his housemate wanted him to move out “for no reason”.<\/p>\n

He said the 61-year-old was “always accusing me of things I haven’t done”, but he declined the social worker’s offer to contact Link2Home to arrange alternative accommodation.<\/p>\n

The court heard Ms Baraket was with a friend when he got back to the house.<\/p>\n

After the friend left, the 25-year-old armed himself with a large kitchen knife, went into her bedroom and stabbed her multiple times.<\/p>\n

The court heard Mr Bullus then walked out of the house and asked a passer-by to take him to hospital to treat a stab wound to his hand.<\/p>\n

\"Police<\/p>\n

Police outside the home in Tweed Heads West. (ABC News: Mackenzie Colahan)<\/p>\n

The judge said he relied on six psychological reports to inform his decision, which included assessments that the accused man had suffered periods of acute psychosis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The assessments found that at the time of the offence, he was suffering auditory hallucinations, with voices from the radio “telling him to do it”.<\/p>\n

The judge said Mr Bullus lacked insight and had distorted reasoning.<\/p>\n

He ordered the 25-year-old to be detained in a correctional facility or another place according to due process undertaken by the Mental Health Review Tribunal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A court has found a man who fatally stabbed his housemate at Tweed Heads West in 2024 was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1108,43,514,2968,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-788816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-court","tag-headlines","tag-mental-health","tag-murder","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\/788816","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=788816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}