ACT Children's Court spares Weston Creek skatepark brawl driver conviction after 'disturbing' reprisals

Chief Magistrate Lorraine Walker denounced the vigilantism as she sentenced the young woman in the ACT Children's Court, saying the unhelpful violence directed at the driver had been "perpetrated in a degree of ignorance".

Her comments, delivered in March, can now be revealed after a non-publication order relating to the sentencing of two teenagers involved in the brawl was lifted.

The order was made to protect the integrity of an associated ACT Supreme Court murder trial, which ended with a 17-year-old boy being found not guilty.

That boy had been accused of fatally stabbing an 18-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

The two teenagers recently sentenced by Ms Walker pleaded guilty to affray charges laid over their roles in the deadly September 2020 incident.

Ms Walker said the fatal fight, which involved 12 people, had erupted at the Weston Creek skatepark that month after a "loud, angry and nasty" Snapchat argument.

One of those appearing for sentence, a girl aged 17 at the relevant time, drove a group that included the boy later acquitted of murder to and from the scene.

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While her involvement in the incident was peripheral, the apprentice hairdresser was subsequently targeted in what Ms Walker described as "extensive extra-curial punishment".

This had included "significant physical violence", resulting in a cut above one of her eyes.

Ms Walker said there had also been actual and attempted arson attacks on cars at the teenager's home, causing a financial loss of nearly $15,000.

The magistrate described such reprisal attacks, carried out by people "determined to exhibit vigilantism", as "significantly disturbing".

"Further violence does not assist the community in any way at all and it is also violence which has been perpetrated in a degree of ignorance about the incident," Ms Walker said.

The magistrate ultimately took the reprisal attacks into account as she decided to give the girl a three-month good behaviour order without conviction.

The other teenager sentenced in March was a boy, aged 17 at the time in question.

He was in the car the girl drove to and from the scene of the brawl.

This boy, who also pleaded guilty to an affray charge, was responsible for a group of adults becoming involved the brawl after he called one of them and requested the man attend as back-up "just in case things went south".

Upon arrival at the skatepark, he joined another brawler and "pre-emptively attacked" a teenager on the opposing side, punching him numerous times.

His counsel also sought a non-conviction order, but Ms Walker declined to make one.

While the magistrate considered the boy's prospects for rehabilitation to be good, she said he, unlike those who had been spared convictions after driving others to the scene, had been "proactive in the violence".

Ms Walker also said concerns the recording of a conviction would have an impact on the boy's career aspirations were speculative.

She therefore convicted the boy of affray and placed him on a six-month good behaviour order.

The magistrate had previously sentenced six other offenders involved in the brawl.

The boy acquitted of murder is set to learn his fate in the Supreme Court this month, when he is due to be sentenced for stabbing the deceased teenager's cousin in the back, inflicting grievous bodily harm, during the skatepark brawl.

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