By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A CRANBOURNE man high on a cocktail of ice, GHB and alcohol has defied an intervention order and threatened his mother with a flick-knife near her throat in her living room, a court has heard.
The 23-year-old father-of-one had been watching TV in an armchair when he stood up, took out a flick knife and held it an inch from his mother’s throat about 10.30pm on 23 September.
“You’re so lucky you didn’t die just then,” the man allegedly said.
The man’s brother entered the house and discovered the man sitting in front of the freshly cracked TV screen.
The man then allegedly made a stabbing motion with the knife, and later while armed with the knife and a metal pole approached the brother outside the house.
The man was in breach of an intervention order which excluded him from within 200 metres of his mother’s house, Dandenong Magistrates’ Court heard on 3 October.
The order had been handed down after the accused held a Stanley knife in a threatening manner towards his brother and smashed a window while trying to break into his mother’s house in May.
A defence lawyer told the court that the man’s most recent offending was due to taking ice the night before, followed by “spiked” GHB and a “large amount” of alcohol.
She said the man’s presentation had “remarkably improved” during his five days in remand custody.
The accused had been self-medicating with drugs after finding another brother’s body post-suicide several years ago. At the same time, his 37-week-old son was stillborn, the lawyer said.
“He has been going through hell trying to get his life together, but hasn’t been able to get past his addiction.”
The man had limited schooling, with attention-deficit behavioural difficulties, the lawyer said.
Given the accused’s youth and lack of priors, he was suitable for a corrections order with mental health and grief counselling, the court was told.
Magistrate Jack Vandersteen said the man’s mind was in a state of flux, and had been clearly withdrawing from substances during a bail hearing a week earlier.
“You were speaking absolute rubbish last week.”
He bailed the man to appear at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court for sentencing on 15 November.
