Posted on 11/24/2011 6:05:19 AM PST by marktwain
A MAN was killed and another wounded by a single shot from a 100-year-old pistol during a fight in a Gold Coast McDonald's restaurant car park.
The Supreme Court in Brisbane heard Samuel Mark Friedman went to the car park at Burleigh Heads to meet Ben Matthews early in the morning of August 15, 2009.
However, Friedman, who was a passenger in a car, was "surprised" when Matthews was joined by a second man, Richard Doherty, and they began punching him through the window.
The court heard a gun was discharged and the bullet passed through Matthews's left arm tricep and into Doherty's chest before exiting through his lower back. Doherty died as a result of the wound.
On Tuesday, Friedman, 26, of Surfers Paradise, was to stand trial on a charge of murdering Doherty, 34, but he pleaded guilty to an alternate charge of manslaughter.
He also pleaded guilty to unlawfully wounding Matthews, 26.
The prosecution accepted Friedman's plea to manslaughter on the basis that at the time he was being attacked and while he had no defence of self-defence, he had not intended to kill or do grievous bodily harm.
The sentence hearing was adjourned until today, when Acting Justice Julie Dick sentenced Friedman to eight years jail with a recommendation he be eligible to apply for parole after serving 32 months.
She said the shooting had a devastating impact on Doherty's family and the public was "distasteful" about those in the drug world carrying handguns.
Justice Dick said it was accepted Friedman had been "ambushed" and had not known until later he had shot someone.
Earlier Prosecutor David Meredith told the court Friedman had been a member of a group of people who had been partying with another group for weeks before the shooting.
The common link between the groups appeared to be a woman named Rachel Bertomeu and the use of drugs and in particular ecstasy.
Mr Meredith detailed at length how there were a series of incidents which had caused friction between Doherty and Matthews and Friedman, Bertomeu and another of their friends.
There had been a police drug raid on an apartment when Friedman had not been present and Doherty and Matthews had wrongly believed Friedman was an informant.
Also Bertomeu had been afraid of her ex-husband and along with another member of her group had been involved in a home invasion where a bracelet was stolen and used to buy a 1911 Styer pistol.
Mr Meredith said Friedman had not been involved in the home invasion but Matthews had been upset with Friedman's friend and Bertomeu.
He said the night before the shooting Friedman had asked Matthews and Doherty to buy $200 worth of drugs but there had been a delay which started a series of angry phone calls.
After a series of arranged meetings which did not come off, Bertomeu drove Friedman to the McDonald's carpark at Burleigh Heads where Friedman expected to confront Matthews.
Mr Meredith said, however, Doherty arrived and he and Matthews had begun assaulting Friedman.
As Bertomeu reversed back to escape, a gun was discharged with the bullet striking Matthews's and passing through him into Doherty's chest.
Mr Meredith said the prosecution accepted only one shot had been fired because the Styler pistol could only hold one bullet at a time.
He noted Bertomeu was killed in a motor accident some time after giving evidence at a committal hearing and since the shooting Matthews had died from a drug overdose.
Barrister Dennis Lynch, for Friedman, said it should be made clear the gun had been bought as protection against Rachel Bertomeu's ex husband and not to threaten Matthews and Doherty.
Mr Lynch said Friedman had not known he had shot either man until told later and had not intended to shoot anyone.
He said Friedman was originally from Port Macquarie in NSW and had come to the Gold Coast to start a scaffolding business but fell in with the drug crowd.
Justice Dick recommended Friedman be allowed to serve the rest of his sentence in a NSW jail.
Apparently, Australia has a different standard for self defense than that in the United States. Quite a number of years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled that "Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the face of an upraised knife."
I think it likely that Mr. Friedman could have sucessfully plead self defense in the United States. He might have ended up serving a similar sentence, because of the drugs, though.
Steyr; S-t-e-y-r. Well-made pistol; Austrian, I believe.
Not surprising as a “100 year old” pistol could have been a 1911!
In any case, dang difficult/expensive to find ammo! If you're planning to protect your drug dealing with a collectible, Lugers or Mauser C96s or the WWI-surplus 1911s work best.
"Also Bertomeu had been afraid of her ex-husband and along with another member of her group had been involved in a home invasion where a bracelet was stolen and used to buy a 1911 Styer pistol."
You can get a good quality 1851 navy cap & ball replica pistol in .44 caliber for under $130 at Cabelas. I learned to shoot with .36 caliber navy nearly 40 years ago. As long as you don’t plan on any speedy reloading, it can work as a viable defense piece if one is strapped for money, or one lives in a no gun zone like Australia.
Can you obtain cap and ball revolvers easily in Australia? I understand that their gun laws are quite draconian. Spear guns have to be registered and the laws were drafted by Soros minion Rebecca Peters.
“Mr Meredith said the prosecution accepted only one shot had been fired because the Styler pistol could only hold one bullet at a time.”
He had no magazine?
I have a feeling there weren’t any “WW1 surplus” 1911s per se; it’s been said that as many as 50% of the pistols issued to the American Expeditionary Force were “lost in action”, so I suspect a lot of the M1911s (as opposed to the WW2 M1911A1s) out there came home in doughboys’ duffle bags. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that....) ;-)
That said, I remember reading that, among collectors of old muzzleloaders, the first rule is “assume it’s loaded”, and run a rod and gimlet down the bore to remove the charge.
Rebecca Peters did not draft Australia's gun laws. She was head of an anti-gun lobby group in Australia at the time the guns laws were rewritten in the second half of the 1990s, but she had no involvement in writing those laws - if she had, they would be very different from what they are.
In most of Australia, spear guns, as used in fishing, do not need to registered - it may be all of Australia, but I can't rule out every state without doing research. If somebody made a spear gun specifically for use out of the water, I think that might have to be registered, but generally there is no registration on spear guns.
It's not that easy to get any revolver in Australia - handguns are not banned, but are restricted to the holders of particular licences and those licences take some work to get and not many people have them. Consequently, there's not a huge market for hand guns, and not that many places sell them (generally, if you want one, you have to import it or choose from a limited selection at a couple of the largest gun shops). Cap and ball revolvers will be sold as antiques occasionally, but that's about the only way I can see many changing hands.
I honestly don’t know much about the Steyr. However, it seems, if it uses a ‘clip’ it would would shoot more than one bullet at a time.
Looks fairly close to the U.S. 45 automatic.
Perhaps the magazine did not work correctly, perhaps a part or parts were lost or broken.
a 1911 would be a Steyr-Hahn in 9mm Steyr. No problem at killing somebody with that thing as long as you had working ammo.
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