A man has pleaded guilty to murdering Hastings jeweller Dermot O’Toole who died trying to protect his wife.
Mr O’Toole, 64, and his wife were attacked on July 12 last year at the boutique business he had run for 26 years.
The man, who cannot be named, entered his plea on Monday morning in Melbourne Magistrates Court.
He also pleaded to charges of armed robbery and intentionally causing injury.
The murder charge he pleaded guilty to is under a section of the Victorian Crimes Act which designates “unintentional killing in the furtherance of a crime of violence”.
It states an offender would be sentenced to a maximum of life for a murder “as though he had killed that person intentionally”.
