Teen arsonists on bail? Tell that to the survivors and victims' relatives of Black Saturday.
Posted on 02/02/2010 4:15:27 AM PST by myknowledge
Two boys charged with lighting one of the fatal Black Saturday bushfires have been released on bail.
Almost a year after the devastating fires, a 14-year-old boy was arrested by appointment in Melbourne today, while his 15-year-old co-accused was arrested in central Victoria.
The youths were each charged with arson causing death, deliberately lighting a bushfire, lighting a fire on a total fire ban day and lighting a fire in a country area during extreme weather conditions.
They were also charged with 135 counts each of criminal damage by fire and multiple counts of using telecommunications services to menace and harass over a two-month period, beginning just days before the fire.
They faced separate hearings in the children's court.
The 14-year-old appeared in court dressed in his school uniform to answer extensive charges, including arson causing death.
Police say the boys lit a fire in early February last year in a dry creek bed at Maiden Gully, near Bendigo.
The court heard the fire spread quickly and led to the death of 47-year-old disabled man Mick Kane, who was trapped in his home during the fire.
Police say the fire caused more than $23 million damage to property and Crown land.
As a result of the Maiden Gully fire in Bendigo, 354 hectares of land, 61 houses and 125 sheds and outbuildings were destroyed.
An angry crowd of about 10 people greeted the 14-year-old outside court, some yelling "show us your face" as the shrouded boy was driven away.
The boy was flanked by two detectives and a uniformed policeman and had a jumper draped over his head.
He was bundled into an unmarked car flanked by another six uniformed officers.
The Black Saturday fires killed 173 people across Victoria and destroyed more than 2,000 properties.
The pair will face court again in May.
Teen arsonists on bail? Tell that to the survivors and victims' relatives of Black Saturday.
The real Crocodile Dundee is dead. He was shot after he refused to turn in his guns.
He was shot after he ambushed police, killing one of them, because they were trying to question him over the fact that he’d fired shots at the home of one of his neighbours wounding two people. He’d committed attempted murder and police were trying to arrest him for that crime and he murdered one of them. He was not shot for refusing to hand in guns.
The Black Saturday fires were a series of fires. Some were deliberately lit, others were the results of faulty electric wiring and some still have not had their causes officially determined.
If it wasn't proved at trial, it's an allegation.
L
There was no attempt to take his guns. If they'd known he was the man who'd fired at the house and its occupants and they'd known where he was, they probably would have tried to take them. But they didn't. They set up a road block to try and catch the man who'd done it, and he fired on the roadblock and the two officers there from cover.
The man he shot and killed Police Sergeant Glen Huitson was a decorated hero - recipient of the Bravery Medal, Australia's third highest decoration for acts of courage. He was doing his job and trying to keep the community safe the day he won his medal. He was doing his job and trying to keep the community safe, the day Rod Ansell gunned him down from ambush.
You want to defend criminal scum, go ahead. But know well that that is what you were doing. This was not an act of political defiance, it was an act of brutality by a scumbag criminal.
1.Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the shooter and would-be truck thief was Ansell. Various spent cartridges later found near Williams’s house were tested and found to be marked consistently with having been fired from Ansell’s 30/30 rifle.
This, by the way is only one of the incidents in which Ansell fired at people's homes referred to in the inquest.
In the US nothing is considered a 'finding of fact' unless a duly constituted Jury has considered it. It's one of the differences in our systems.
What you have is an allegation that Mr. "Dundee" fired at some homes, there was no Trial. Therefore no 'facts' were found, at least as far as I am concerned.
L
And yet you seem to feel entirely comfortable claiming that Ansell was shot because people were trying to take his guns.
Where’s your evidence for that supposed fact?
I have the inquest report open in front of me. 52 pages which is the official findings as to what happened made by Mr RJ Wallace SM, acting as Coroner in the Coroner’s Court of the Northern Territory. It’s a publically available document, quite easy to find and it sets out what actually happened as opposed to what some people seem to have tried to claim happened.
No evidence is needed for an allegation, just like the allegations your Coroner made.
I have in my possesion a 600 page report the FBI wrote about the murders they committed at Waco which is composed of complete bullshit.
What's your point?
I've got the article that started that:
I am unashamed to tell you I am weeping as I write this story.
Last August, Rodney William Ansell, the rugged Aussie whose real life exploits inspired the Crocodile Dundee movies, died in a shootout with Australian police who had come to confiscate his unregistered firearms. Oh, you didn't read about it in our ‘free’ press? That's cause it never appeared.
Untrue. He died in a shootout with two policemen who were standing by a roadblock trying to find a man who'd fired on a house the previous day, injuring its occupants.
A police sergeant was also killed in the incident; the number of "peace officers" injured while invading old 'Croc' in his natural domain is unknown, but likely he took down several. I don't mean to imply glee over the death and possible additional injuries; after all, they were "just doing their job" like the obedient Nazi's tried at Nuremburg.
Only one police officer was injured, the Sergeant who was killed, and we do know this - the NT doesn't have all that many police.
Ansell had been named 1988 Australian Man of the Year for inspiring the movie and putting Australia on the Tourism Map." of particular interest to us here in the tourism dependent desert, Ansell was probably responsible for hundreds of millions of increased tourism dollars flowing into his beloved country.
There is no 'Australian Man of the Year'. There is an Australian of the Year, and the 1988 Australian of the Year was a woman - Kay Cottee, the first woman to sail non stop solo and unassisted around the world.
They made it up. It doesn't match the facts. It was a made up story spread in America because obviously the people who spread it thought Australia was far enough away that American's couldn't check.
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