{"id":814215,"date":"2026-07-21T11:03:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T11:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/814215\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T11:03:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T11:03:16","slug":"five-teenagers-plead-guilty-to-manslaughter-of-jack-westren-at-shellharbour-junction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/814215\/","title":{"rendered":"Five teenagers plead guilty to manslaughter of Jack Westren at Shellharbour Junction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five teenagers have admitted to their roles in luring and violently ambushing a man with an acquired brain injury to a New South Wales train station under the pretence he would have sex with a 13-year-old girl.<\/p>\n

The four boys and one girl, who were aged between 13 and 15 when Jack Westren was fatally stabbed, pleaded guilty to manslaughter at Port Kembla Children’s Court on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Mr Westren, who suffered a brain injury in a motor vehicle accident in 2008, died near Shellharbour Junction train station after being assaulted on January 28 last year.<\/p>\n

Court documents state Mr Westren’s medical issues manifested in various ways, including messaging girls on social media and asking them inappropriate questions.<\/p>\n

His intellectual functioning was assessed to be in the “extremely low” range.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The five teenagers admitted to their involvement in Jack Westren’s death. (ABC Illawarra: Tim Fernandez)<\/p>\n

According to court documents, Mr Westren asked someone on Snapchat to give him a girl’s phone number on the day of the attack.<\/p>\n

That person gave him the number of a 13-year-old boy but said it belonged to “Amy”.<\/p>\n

Mr Westren began messaging that number, saying, “Do you have a boyfriend yes or no?”<\/p>\n

The pair exchanged messages that discussed meeting up to have sex. The boy told Mr Westren him throughout the night “I want you” and “I like older boys”.<\/p>\n

\"Bouquets<\/p>\n

Flowers were left at the station after Jack Westren’s death. (ABC Illawarra: Tim Fernandez)<\/p>\n

Girl used as ‘bait’<\/p>\n

Court documents show the boy then shared screenshots of the messages exchanged between Mr Westren and “Amy” with his friends.<\/p>\n

“There’s a paedophile that we’re trying to get to come to Shelly tomorrow youse want to bash him?” one message in the group chat said.<\/p>\n

Video taken that night showed some of the boys in a front yard, wearing balaclavas and “simulating assaults, kidnapping and robberies with weapons”, according to the documents.<\/p>\n

The next day Mr Westren asked “Amy” what train she was going to catch to Shellharbour.<\/p>\n

The boy and three friends, including a 13-year-old girl who would act as “bait”, boarded a train to meet him while the boy continued to exchange messages with Mr Westren.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Jack Westren was fatally attacked after being lured to the station. (Supplied: Simone Westren)<\/p>\n

“You are with three boys. I saw you but you just didn’t see me,” Mr Westren said in a message while he was on the train.<\/p>\n

“Have you got people waiting to bash me?”<\/p>\n

Another group was waiting in Shellharbour, with some discussing in a group chat that they “were going to bring machetes”.<\/p>\n

Tamara Doust, 39, allegedly received a message from one of the boys that said, “Wanna come up Shelly? The boys are having a fight”.<\/p>\n

“Yeah G, what time?” she allegedly replied.<\/p>\n

Ms Doust allegedly drove some of the boys to the mall, where they met up with the rest of the group and played games at Timezone before going to Shellharbour Junction.<\/p>\n

She allegedly took 11 teenagers to the station, six of whom travelled in the boot.<\/p>\n

In a video recording taken by the girl in the boot, one of the boys could be seen wearing a knuckleduster and saying “imagine this hitting him”.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Jack Westren believed he was going to meet a girl he met online before he was fatally stabbed. (Supplied: Simone Westren)<\/p>\n

‘What we did was good’<\/p>\n

Court documents state that the ambush that followed was recorded by the girl on her mobile phone.<\/p>\n

Ms Doust allegedly ran towards Mr Westren, hit him in the head and called him a “paedo”.<\/p>\n

He fell to the ground before the teenagers repeatedly kicked and punched him. One allegedly stabbed him in the heart and liver before they all fled back to the car.<\/p>\n

People nearby ran to Mr Westren’s aid and administered CPR until an ambulance arrived, but he died at the scene.<\/p>\n

Some of the teenagers subsequently discussed the incident on social media before their arrest.<\/p>\n

“What we did was good,” one of the boys said on Snapchat.<\/p>\n

The teenagers who faced court today had a charge of murder withdrawn due to their guilty plea to manslaughter.<\/p>\n

Court documents stated all were liable for manslaughter on the basis that they agreed to attack Mr Westren as a group in a situation involving dangerous weapons and would have foreseen “an appreciable risk of serious injury”.<\/p>\n

Ms Doust, who is yet to enter pleas to a charge of murder, will face Wollongong Local Court on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

A sixth teenager, a 15-year-old boy, will face the children’s court next week.<\/p>\n

He is yet to enter a plea to the charge of murder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five teenagers have admitted to their roles in luring and violently ambushing a man with an acquired brain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,146314,44,146317,389012,389014,389016,389015,389013,41,39,42,40,389017],"class_list":["post-814215","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-port-kembla-local-court","tag-shellharbour-junction","tag-shellharbour-junction-fatal-assault","tag-shellharbour-junction-stabbing","tag-tamara-doust","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wollongong-local-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814215","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=814215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}