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BRISBANE - A man who tried to kill his friend after leading him to an abandoned Brisbane prison has been sentenced to nine years' jail.
New Zealand-born Taukiri Christopher Keen, 20, pleaded guilty in the Queensland Supreme Court yesterday to the attempted murder of James Gilders at the Old Boggo Road jail in October 2005.
The Brisbane court heard Keen and Mr Gilders had been friends for about 2 1/2 years but the friendship soured when Keen began to suspect Mr Gilders of sleeping with his girlfriend.
After meeting him in the Brisbane CBD on the day of the offence, Keen suggested they visit the jail site. Prosecutor Michael Lehane told the court the pair travelled by train with another man to the old prison site, gaining entry by scaling a series of walls.
The court was told that once inside the former jail, Keen announced: "Welcome to jail, there is no way out, there are walls all around us." He later told police he had intended to kill Mr Gilders before travelling to the prison.
About 30 minutes later the group decided to leave. The third man left first and Keen asked Mr Gilders to lift him up.
However, when Mr Gilders bent down, Keen stabbed him in the neck, knocked him to the ground, dropped a large rock on his head twice and stabbed him again. When he had finished the attack, Keen asked Mr Gilders if he was dead yet, to which Mr Gilders responded: "Not even close, brother." He got to his feet and the pair shook hands before Keen left the badly injured Mr Gilders to make his own way out.
Mr Gilders called an ambulance and was taken to the Princess Alexandra Hospital where he was treated for a broken jaw and stab wounds to his neck.
However, he did not make a complaint and the incident did not come to police attention until Keen confessed while police where interviewing him about other incidents in January 2006.
He also claimed to have killed several homeless people and buried their bodies, but there was no evidence to support his claim.
Justice Ann Lyons noted Keen had "gone off the rails" at a young age after joining gangs in New Zealand when he was 13. He witnessed a murder at 14, which resulted in him being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and served his first period of juvenile detention at 15.
After moving to Australia, he fathered a child at 16 and had remained unemployed and had not attended school since his arrival.
Justice Lyons sentenced Keen to nine years' jail but ordered he be eligible for parole after 4 1/2 years.
Taking into account the time he has already served awaiting trial, he will be eligible for release in July 2010.
-AAP
