From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Thursday April twenty five, twenty twenty five. The lawyer representing Bruce Lemon in It to Woomba rape trial claims important evidence like witness statements and CCTV footage is missing the matter who has been adjourned until late May while the prosecution and defense get organized. The former Liberal staffer hasn't entered a plea, but has indicated he'll fight the chargers.
Australians are gathering to commemorate Anzac Day around the nation. Today. You can read about the last flight out of Vietnam following the fall of Saigon in nineteen seventy five and the loyal Vietnamese embassy staff left behind right now at the Australian dot Com dot au. The Northern Territory will require judges to refuse bail to alleged offenders if community safety is at risk. That's in new laws the government hopes to pass when it urgently recalls Parliament on Wednesday.
Following the stabbing death of a seventy one year old supermarket worker, an eighteen year old man who was on bail at the time. Is the alleged offender today? What's gone so wrong in the Territory. In the early evenings, the residents of Nightcliff in Darwin get out into the warm twilight air cycling and jogging along the beach where the land meets the team or sea. Nightcliffe's median property
price is just under one million dollars. One of the territory's most exclusive places to live, and for a long time it is felt a world away from the really gritty crime that's one of the Territory's hottest political issues. Until Wednesday afternoon, while the afterwork crowd was getting out into the evening, Nightcliff's local friendly grosser, Linford Feek was living out his last moments.
Laid Darwin shop owner has been fatally stabbed after confronting a man trying to steal from his store. Let's go back to Matt Cunning and he's live at the scene.
Matt.
Has the offender been caught? He was apprehended just after midnight, Pete. This is a shocking incident that.
Will Territory Police said. An eighteen year old suspect handed himself in early on Thursday morning.
The matter is currently under investigation by our major crime team with support from a myriad of other specialist areas.
As the sun rose over Darwin. On Thursday, disturbing details about that alleged assailant emerged.
His birthday was just earlier this week. He turned eighteen years old. Very young boy, you could say.
Leah Mendez is a reporter with The Australian.
Now there's a bunch of charges there. Two counts of aggravated assault, threatening injury, deprivation of liberty, to counts of sexual intercourse without consent, two counts of sexual intercourse with a child under the age of sixteen years of age, resisting police, two counts of assaulting police and possession of metham fettermin So you know, these are incredibly serious charges and there are a lot of questions right across the territory by people who are wandering why was this boy on.
Bail and so what do we know about that? Why was he on bail?
The interesting thing is that he was first taken into custody towards the end of December in twenty twenty three. There was an out of court bail hearing heard by an on call judge sign over the telephone. He was still in the watchhouse when it happened, and it appears that he's just been given bail with hardly any conditions. A lot of the time, for far less serious offending,
alleged defenders are often given an ankle bracelet. You see so many children walking around the territory with ankle bracelets on. It's something that people are just accustomed to seeing.
So that was December twenty twenty three when this young man was granted bail and it's now a long time on. Do we know anything about what was going on in his life between then and now?
Yes, So he was essentially ordered to remain at a very small community in the territory, and he was prohibited to enter Darwin unless he had to attend to urgent medical dental treatment. Who was prohibited from approaching or communicating either directly or indirectly with the alleged victim. And he was also banned from drinking alcohol and taking drugs.
Linford Fik is the seventy one year old man who's died. What do we know about him?
He was born in Canada. He purchased this small little grocery store that by all accounts as a very successful and family run business that he operated with his wife Margaret. He's an Australian citizen and very loved in this very tight knit community. But this is the thing. I was talking to his son Ben, who also works at the store. You know, they had seen this increase in concerning behavior where they almost were of the understanding that something like this was bound to happen.
In the territory. There's no bigger political issue than crime, and Liam has spent much of the past few years covering shocking, violent offending on the streets of communities like Alice Springs.
I think this has really pushed the territory into a level where they've quite possibly never been before. There is a lot of anger there is, to be completely honest, a lot of anger which is racially motivated. Some people don't want to talk about it, but that is the
truth of what's happening on the ground there. As sad as it is, it was only earlier this month he saw another elderly man who was essentially hacked in his own home by two young boys thirteen and fourteen years old who broke into this Also a seventy one year old man's home who was left in intensive care under heavy sedation after the attack, and he essentially had cuts
to his bone from a machete. On my last trip to Alice Springs earlier this month, I met a gentleman named bart and he was a lovely local who lived near the hospital in Alice Springs, and there was this little riot that had occurred on his streets one evening. I arrived just about two to three minutes after police had arrived, but was standing out on the street armed with a fire poker and a large can of wasp spray. And he looks at me and just says, this is
how we have to live. People are arming themselves because they're so fearful that people are going to either attack them or come into their own homes and attack them, or steal their cars. This is the reality of many people who are living in the territory.
Sky News as Matt Cunningham spoke to the owner of the local barbershop, Cathie Zaviro after mister Fike's death. I'm just in shock.
I'm such a shock for the family, family run business.
I just don't know how they're going to move forward.
Eleven million dollars to have someone murdered right in front of it.
It's a joke that eleven million dollars she's talking about. Is the giant Nightcliff Police station right across the road from where Linfordfick died, but it's never been used as a working cop shop. It's the base for the territory's tactical cops and it closes each day at four pm. There are no cells or watchhouse. It's just like any other office. The territory's Chief Minister is the Country Liberal Party's Lea Finocchiaro, who was elected in twenty twenty four
after a tough on crime campaign. She sheded blame for the situation home to the Labor government, which had governed the territory for eight years. One of the crimes that got Finocchio elected was a shocking twenty twenty three murder a young man named Declan Lavity, who was working in a bottle shop in the suburb of Jingly, just six minutes drive from Nightcliff.
Keith Keranua was found guilty of fatally stubbing mister Lavity during a brief but deadly knife fight inside the Airport Tavern BWS on March nineteen, twenty twenty three.
There were some quite dramatic scenes here. After the verdict ash in factor, the court was locked down for about five minutes. There were angry scenes as those supporters yelled out their anger and displeasure at the verdict.
Declan was twenty, his killer was just eighteen. Keith Kernawia's family and friends said he was acting in self defense when he plunged a knife five times into Declan Lavity, but the court heard he had a history of violence, including punching a thirteen year old boy just hours before he killed Declan. In June twenty twenty four, the judge gave Kerinawia the mandatory sentence life in prison with a non parole period of twenty years.
During sentencing, the judge described mister Laberty's murder as a violent and unprovoked attack on an innocent member of the public.
It gave some relief to Declan's family.
He not only suffered, but he died in agonizing death, and I'm.
So glad the jury could see that that's what happened.
I think a lot of people saw the case of Declan Lavity as a sort of tipping point that was a moment of change, and we saw Declan z ow come in. Declan's mother, Samara, who I've spoken to today. She did a huge amount of lobbying with the government and has really carried on Declan's legacy to have some
real meaningful change. But today she's in shock that this has happened, and she feels like after everything she's done to change some of these behaviors in the territory, all of that was for nothing, just because there's been another death at the hands allegedly of a young person with a knife.
In twenty twenty four, one of Leah Finocchiaro's first acts was an attempt to reduce knife crime with an act called Declan's Law, legislation that tightened bail laws and introduced something that had been abolished, an offensive breach of bail for young offenders aged ten to seventeen. The idea was to keep more alleged defenders in custody while they were awaiting a court date. Critics of the bail law, just like critics of mandatory sentencing, have long argued title laws
don't reduce offending. Lea Finocchiaro says she's toughening bail laws again and will urgently recall Parliament on Wednesday.
What we want for the Northern Territory is to have the toughest bail laws in this country. This has been done in New South Wales and Victoria and we're confident it could really set a strong benchmark for community safety here in the Northern Territory. It means judges must consider the safety of the community if they're going to bow that person before they go on and consider all of those other bail factors.
He's Corrections Minister Jared Mayley.
We know this is going to be difficult and pressure on our prections offices, and we intend to make sure that if you commit a crime in the Northern Territory there'll be a bit for you in our correction system.
Lindford Fick's wife, Margaret, said they'd been married for fifty one years and had seven grandchildren. She described Lindford as a beautiful man, a true gentleman and my soulmate gone forever. God bless him. Rip my darling man. Coming up. Will this effect the federal election? Federal politicians like to say, of course they do, that crime is an issue for
state and territory governments. That's true to an extent. The states and territories handle policing injustice, but in the Territory, at this federal there'll be no getting away from crime. The territory has the safe Labor seat of Solomon, which covers Darwin and surrounds and is held by Labours Luke Gosling and Lingiari, which covers the rest of the territory and the adjacent islands. It's held by Labour's Marion Scriminger
on a margin of just one point seven percent. Peter Dutton is trying hard to make crime a national issue.
We will work day and night to make sure that your local community, your local suburb is safer. I've always been serious in my public life as a police officer and since i've been in Parliament in protecting people, and I'm very genuine about that.
Perhaps the territory's most famous politician on the national stage is the CLP's Justiner NumPy in for Price, who's a senator. She's not up for reelection this year, but she chimed in on social media after this week's stabbing, saying we must do everything we can to stamp out this abhorrent behavior. A lot of the crime that you've covered in the Northern territory has been late night street violence in places like Alice Springs, gangs of kids who are not in
their homes for a lot of complex reasons. There's family dysfunction, there's our cohol and drug abuse going on in those homes, and they don't feel that it's safe to go there. Every so often a federal politician flies in to look at the situation and sound concerned. How do you think territorians regard the causes of this crime? You spoke a little earlier about vigilante violence. What a territorian say to you about what's actually going wrong.
We're talking about incredibly complex issues here. Until you've been to some of these remote communities, you're never going to get a true understanding of what is happening on the ground there. There's a lot of people that are living in what could be described as third world conditions. There's a level of disadvantage here where children are just not
going to school. You know the amount of times where I've been at a town camp and in a school bus coming through and there's zero children on that bus. And when children are staying up until daybreak, you can understand why it's impossible to get them into school.
They throughout a labor territory government. Both the Northern territories federal electorates are held by labor. Do you think this will have an impact on the federal election.
I do, And quite interestingly, the two country Liberal Party candidates that I've spoken to wipe their hands clean of crime issues. They're saying that is more of a territory government issue. When people are being killed either at their own workplace or there's home invasions happening constantly, I think there comes a point where when is this going to really become a massive federal issue. I mean, there are some people that are genuinely worried that people aren't actually
going to want to live there anymore. For the you know what they love. It's the camping, it's the outdoors, It's the beautiful bushwalks and waterfalls that you can experience. It's that life lifestyle. There is a territory lifestyle that you can't experience anywhere else in this country, and that is why people live there. And there is a real
fear within the community. I know many people that are planning, genuinely planning on packing up their lives and moving somewhere else because it's just gotten to the point where they do not want to be living here anymore.
Liam Mendez is a journalist with The Australian. You can read this story as well as all the nation's best news, sport, politics and business, plus of course, all our coverage of ANZAC Day at The Australian dot com dot au