By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A 22-year-old Dandenong South man has been jailed for up to 24 years after point-blank shooting dead a childhood friend in Springvale.
Paguir Pan pleaded guilty in the Victorian Supreme Court to the murder of Winis Atem Apet in a laneway car park off Springvale Road shortly before midnight on Sunday 10 March, 2019.
Pan had been upset following a “play fight” with Mr Apet in the car park earlier that night.
Thirty-seven minutes after the “minor scuffle”, Pan returned wearing a hoodie and mask, pulled out a 12-gauge shotgun from a bag and pointed it at Mr Apet.
“What are you doing?” Mr Apet said.
Pan fired at Mr Apet from about a metre away. He told a friend “get out of my way” then fled in Mr Apet’s car, which he abandoned about a kilometre from his own home.
He also abandoned his clothing and phone.
Mr Apet died at The Alfred hospital about an hour later.
“Whatever anger you felt at Mr Apet hitting you back during the play fight, you had more than sufficient time to regain control of your temper and reassess your plan,” Justice Lesley Taylor said in sentencing on 29 October.
Pan’s fleeing from the scene without helping his victim was “cowardly and callous”.
“Mr Apet was your childhood friend. You each spent significant time with the other’s family and were like brothers.”
At the time, Pan was angry at Mr Apet for being a “dog” in informing against a mutual friend to police and initially denying it.
“But for that background, it is inconceivable that your anger at his actions during the play fight would have flared and burned at sufficient intensity for you to take his car to obtain a loaded shotgun and return, disguised, to shoot him,” Justice Taylor said.
It was not a “revenge killing” but it was a “deliberate taking of a life … motivated by anger and self-entitlement”.
The pair had been drinking with five other friends in a Dandenong house that night. Pan was heavily intoxicated with alcohol, ice and Xanax at the time, Judge Taylor said.
He was on bail for armed robbery, and released from juvenile detention three months earlier.
In “deeply affecting” victim impact statements, Mr Apet’s “loving and tightknit” family told of how they were “steeped in the grief” of losing him through violence.
Pan, a former Dandenong High School and Hallam Senior College student, came from a hard-working Sudanese refugee family.
He’d binge drank and used various illicit drugs since leaving school.
Pan is also facing a County Court trial for armed robbery, as well as Magistrates’ Court matters for allegedly breaking into two cars and assaulting a prison officer.
“You have struggled to live not only a crime-free life, but one absent violence.”
Judge Taylor noted Pan was 19 at the time of the murder, made an early guilty plea and wrote a “largely self-serving” letter to Mr Apet’s family two years after the shooting.
Pan was assessed as immature and a high risk of violent reoffending but it was hoped his rehabilitation prospects would improve by the time of release, the judge said.
He will be eligible for parole after 16 years in jail.
His term includes 871 days in pre-sentence custody.
