Rex Martinich
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A dispute over stolen motorbikes turned fatal as a suburban street became a battleground filled with “indiscriminate” rapid gunfire and baseball bats.
Carlo Piero Stewart, 31, died after being shot in the thighs and back with a handgun during a confrontation between two groups of men at Ipswich, west of Brisbane, in 2021.
The victim was trying to retrieve stolen unregistered trail bikes that had been sold to Brayden Alan Wilson-Knight, Justice Peter Callaghan heard on Friday.
Wilson-Knight had armed himself with a .22 calibre handgun before driving with Tye Joshua Bickle and a 16-year-old boy to where Stewart’s group had agreed to exchange the bikes on July 27, 2021.
Stewart instead went to Wilson-Knight’s North Booval home with nine other men.
“They approached Wilson-Knight’s [family] in a threatening way,” crown prosecutor David Nardone told the Brisbane Supreme Court on Friday.
The trio drove home before Wilson-Knight pulled out the handgun and confronted Stewart on the front lawn.
“Carlo Stewart in essence invited Wilson-Knight to pull the trigger and he did,” Nardone said.
“But it did not fire.”
During the fight, Bickle ended up in possession of the gun after evidence suggested Stewart hit the Logan man in the head with a bat, Nardone said.
“Bickle discharged the gun, at first away and to the side but the remaining shots were fired indiscriminately…all 10 shots within seven seconds,” Nardone said.
North Booval man Brayden Alan Wilson-Knight, 29, Logan man Tye Joshua Bickle, 33, and a boy, then 16,
Stewart was hit by Bickle’s gunfire and was immediately driven from the scene in a utility vehicle.
Wilson-Knight, Bickle and the teen were deliberately struck by a small SUV as they left the scene on foot.
The trio were initially charged with murder before pleading guilty to manslaughter and two counts each of grievous bodily harm.
Stewart had many hopes and dreams and was a “lovable larrikin”, his mother said in a victim impact statement submitted to Callaghan.
Stewart’s sister had wanted him to walk her down the aisle at her wedding.
“Losing Carlo took a piece of me that I will never get back,” she said in her victim statement.
Wilson-Knight, now 29, was genuinely sorry to Stewart’s family and to his co-offenders, defence barrister Scott Lynch said.
Bickle, now 33, argued through his lawyer he had panicked and fired the gun after the baseball bat impact fractured his skull.
The injury left him permanently unable to work, defence barrister Angus Edwards said.
“The punishment he has already received is far greater than what the court can impose,” Edwards said.
“He will be reminded forever that he is no longer the man he once was.”
The teen’s barrister argued there was a period of only 43 seconds between her client first knowing his group had a gun and when Stewart was shot.
Callaghan reserved his decision on sentencing until October 1.
Wilson-Knight and Bickle were remanded in custody.
AAP
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