By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A “smiling” man who inflicted horrific injuries by repeatedly “trampolining” on the head of an unconscious taxi driver has been jailed.
Jordyn Delamare, now 23, of Cranbourne, smoked up to eight cones and dropped a tab of LSD prior to his “unprovoked, viscous, and brutal” attack on his victim on Chandler Road Noble Park on 27 November 2020.
He later told police that he saw the man walking and thought “I’ve got to kill that”.
Delamare pleaded guilty at the County Court of Victoria to intentionally causing serious injury in circumstances of gross violence as well as property damage.
During the attack, a passing driver beeped her horn to distract Delamare.
He smiled, grabbed onto a nearby fence with both hands and jumped three or four times on the motionless victim’s head with both feet “like it was a trampoline”, a witness said.
According to witnesses, Delamare seemed to be enjoying himself – grinning and looking happy and proud, sentencing judge Carolene Gwynn noted on 9 November.
Soon after, another driver saw a naked Delamare singing and dancing on Chandler Road. After the driver stopped, Delamare shoulder-charged and broke the car’s windscreen.
He later charged at police, yelling “Coppers! Shoot me! Shoot me!”.
After aiming capsicum spray with little effect, police subdued the still nude, “violent” and “aggressive” Delamare. He was sedated by paramedics and taken to hospital with a brain bleed.
The unresponsive victim was taken to hospital in a life-threatening condition with a broken jaw, eye socket, teeth and nose.
The right side of his bloodied face was “dented in”. He was treated at The Alfred for nearly two months.
As a result, he hasn’t worked or driven since, feels alienated from his son and may suffer from his traumatic brain injury for “the rest of his days”.
“Life as he knew it is fundamentally changed,” Judge Gwynn said.
In the lead-up to the attack, Delamare was using five grams of cannabis a day as well as regularly taking psychedelics like LSD and magic mushrooms.
Under a drug-induced psychosis, he’d heard ‘voices’ when he left the house that night.
He later told a psychologist that he’d thought the victim was “his 17-year-old self” and had to “punish” him. He harboured guilt over not intervening in an assault of his friend when 17 of age.
Delamare was found fit for trial. His psychosis that night was self-inflicted, and he had no diagnosable mental illness but for symptoms of a substance abuse disorder, the judge noted.
Born in Wellington, New Zealand, Delamare settled in Melbourne with his family when 13 years old.
Still a non-citizen in Australia, he faces possible deportation after his jail term.
Judge Gwynn accepted Delamare was “extremely remorseful”. It was his first offence and “out of character”.
She deemed his rehabilitation prospects were “promising” if he stays drug-free.
Delamare was jailed for up to seven-and-a-half years with a four year, 10 month non-parole period.
The term includes 713 days in pre-sentence detention.
