Judge Jack Vandersteen, the president of the children’s court, said: “[The accused has] been charged as a single person and therefore as the principal.”<\/p>\n
He said there were reasonable grounds to believe the accused committed the offence, and that an item believed to have been at the scene of the alleged offending had been found.<\/p>\n
![\"Half](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/76d4210c46afc229b47bc963c13b0573.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Flowers adorn Layla Jeffery’s memorial at the Bullocks Head lookout in Donald. (ABC News: Tamara Clark)<\/p>\n
Order for swabs<\/p>\n
Judge Vandersteen granted a police application to get a new DNA sample from the accused, after chief crown prosecutor Kristie Churchill KC asked for the boy’s previous sample to be destroyed.<\/p>\n
The judge informed the teenage defendant that if he did not comply with the mouth swab, police could use reasonable force to obtain it.<\/p>\n
“They will ask you to do it yourself and if you don’t, they will do it,” the judge said.<\/p>\n
The accused replied: “Alright.”<\/p>\n
When asked if he had any questions for the judge, the accused said: “No, your honour.”<\/p>\n
Slouched, yawning<\/p>\n
The accused attended his court appearance wearing a black beanie and a black T-shirt layered over a white long-sleeve top, with Judge Vandersteen asking him to remove the beanie at the start of the hearing.<\/p>\n
After doing so, the teenager slouched down with his elbows on his knees for the rest of the hearing \u2014 periodically stretching, yawning and looking up at the camera.<\/p>\n
The case has been adjourned until September 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Children’s Court judge has said there are reasonable grounds to suggest a teenage boy committed the murder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":863243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[502,122787,1108,48,13885,43,432466,2968,44,41,39,42,40,9963],"class_list":["post-863242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-children","tag-childrens-court","tag-court","tag-crime","tag-donald","tag-headlines","tag-layla-jeffery","tag-murder","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-youth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863242","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=863242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}