No witness statements over shotgun death
By Bruce Grundy (23.10.2003)
The Department of Justice and Attorney-General has confirmed that there were no witness statements submitted to the Coroner when it was decided not to hold an inquest into the shooting death of a man in Newmarket in 1990 (see story: Mysterious Death And The John Oxley Connection).
A witness to the killing, who subsequently confessed to murdering the victim involved, said at his trial last month that at the time he was never interviewed by police.
When police attended the scene of the killing in 1990 they found a man with a shotgun wound to his leg, a double-barrelled shotgun nearby and the victim who had suffered a shotgun blast to his upper chest.
The victim died shortly afterwards.
The witness spent two months in hospital recovering from the wound to his leg.
Three and a half years later police recommended no inquest into the death be held.
The Coroner supported the recommendation and the Director General of the Department of Justice and Attorney-General accepted the recommendation.
Ten years later the witness, who had not been interviewed by police, turned himself in and confessed to the killing.
He subsequently went on trial for murder, pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the basis of negligence and was given a sentence to be served concurrently with the term of imprisonment he is currently completing.
Shortly before the shooting the person concerned had been a resident of the John Oxley Youth Detention Centre (see story: Mysterious Death And The John Oxley Connection).
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