A Keilor Lodge man has been sentenced to six years in jail for his role in the stabbing death of a friend at a St Albans party.
Kether Mazzaro pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of 18-year-old Hieu Van Nguyen.
The Supreme Court heard late last month that Nguyen died of a stab wound to the chest delivered by Nathaniel Raimundo as Mazzaro held him from behind in Raimundo’s Alfrieda Street flat on May 10, 2013.
The party stretched into the early hours of the next day. Cannabis, heroin and ice were used. Just after 5am, Raimundo, Mazzaro, Nguyen and others were in the lounge room, the court was told.
Raimundo came into the room agitated and kicked Nguyen, believing he had stolen his stash of heroin.
He then pushed Nguyen onto his back before striking him with a large champagne bottle, and swearing at him.
Raimundo then said to Mazzaro “we are going to teach him a lesson – you hold him”.
Mazzaro, then 19, grabbed Nguyen from behind by the shoulders before Raimundo stabbed Nguyen in the chest above the right nipple. The court heard Nguyen asked both men to take him to hospital and promised not to tell anyone who stabbed him.
However Mazzaro stripped him of his clothes, carried him out of the house and put him in the back of a Honda that belonged to Raimundo’s girlfriend.
CCTV footage showed Raimundo and Mazzaro pushed Nguyen out of the car, naked, onto a Majorca Street nature strip near the Sunshine Hospital’s emergency department.
Nguyen’s body was found by a hospital employee about 5.55am.
The car was then driven to Mazzaro’s home in Keilor Lodge. It was later found burnt out.
Two weeks before the attack, Mazzaro was convicted of recklessly causing injury and was on a community corrections order at the time.
Judge Phillip Priest said Mazzaro’s treatment of Nguyen was “callous, and you deprived him of dignity in death”.
“You aided and abetted Raimundo’s unlawful and dangerous act in inflicting the fatal stab wound to Mr Nguyen’s chest, by holding Mr Nguyen around the shoulders,” he said.
Mazzaro will be eligible for parole in three years.
