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Evie Amati (left) seconds from swinging an axe at her first victim | Screen capture: 7-Eleven security camera
A nine-year maximum jail time for a Sydney trans woman who tried to murder three people with an axe is an ‘affront to justice,’ an appeal court has been told.
After a Tinder date, Evie Amati attacked two strangers with an axe inside a 7-Eleven at Enmore before chasing a pedestrian down the sidewalk in January 2017.
In a criminal appeal court today (26 July), a crown barrister slammed the ruling as ‘manifestly inadequate,’ according to the Australian Associated Press.
What happened?
After a Tinder date, Amati felt hurt. Her date had shamed her for being a trans woman.
She took a cocktail of alcohol and other drugs.
And, just an hour before the attack, she messaged her date: ‘One day I’m going to kill a lot of people… For hating something so innocent.
In shocking security camera footage, Amati can be seen strolling into the supermarket casually carrying an axe.
As one customer in black waits in line and converses with Amati, another, a woman with vibrant-colored dreadlocks, leaves the store.
In seconds, Amati strikes both of them with an axe.
Victim protected by her dreadlocks
The first victim, Ben Rimmer, suffered a fractured nasal bone, eye socket and cheekbones. He bled profusely onto the petrol station shop’s carpeted floor.
Sharon Hacker, struck in the back of the neck, had the potentially fatal-blow softened by her thick dreadlocks.
Amati left the scene. Afterwards, she chased down and attempted to strike a man, Shane Redwood, twice.
He used his backpack to block the strike, the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal was told on Friday.
‘An affront to justice’
‘[Nine years] was not an appropriate sentence for the offence against Mr Rimmer, let alone all three of them,’ crown barrister Maria Cinque said.
‘Nine years with a minimum of four-and-a-half years is so manifestly inadequate that it is an affront to the administration of justice.’
Cinque took aim at the sentencing judge’s way of calculating Amati’s prison sentence, aggregating the three offences.
Amati faced a maximum of 75 years with a minimum term of 20 years.
Though, judge Mark Williams indicated terms of between five and seven years for each of the three offences.
‘Those figure themselves show a disconnection with the maximum penalties,’ Cinque said.
‘The non-parole period is only six months more than the indicative [minimum] sentence for the first offence.’
Amati called her attack ‘catastrophic’
Amati’s barrister, Peter Lange, argued that the sentencing took into account several mitigating circumstances. Such as Amati’s drug-intake and mental health.
Moreover, Lange told the court that Amati described her actions as ‘catastrophic,’ indicated recourse, and took part in an addiction program.
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