Kidnapper loses appeal
Chef to stay in jail for plunge off range
A PORT Douglas chef who was jailed for 12 years after driving his ex-girlfriend off the side of the Kuranda Range during a 16-hour kidnap ordeal has lost his appeal bid.
Daniel Rooney, 27, had argued the hefty jail term was “manifestly excessive” in the Court of Appeal while also launching a fundraising campaign to pay for his legal defence.
But in findings handed down yesterday, Justice David Jackson ruled the Cairns Supreme Court penalty handed down last year was reasonable due to the “extremely serious offending” and dismissed the case.
“It may be recognised that the applicant is a relatively young man, with a comparatively minor previous criminal history who, by reason of the statutorily mandated non-parole period, will not be eligible for parole until after more than nine years and seven months of the total 12-year period of imprisonment,” he said.
“That is a heavy sentence but it was imposed for extremely serious offending.”
He said Rooney had not offered comparable cases or any “process of reasoning” as a reason to reduce the sentence so it was “not manifestly excessive”.
Rooney subjected the woman, who cannot be identified, to a horrific series of assaults and abuse leading up to the June 2017 kidnapping.
The court heard during his sentence he stalked her for a month, including choking her unconscious, breaking into her house several times, waiting outside her parents’ home, calling her work and creating a fake social media account.
He then put her through about 16 hours of terror that ended with Rooney deliberately driving a vehicle, with both of them inside, off the Kuranda Range while saying “I’m sorry”.
The judgment said the vehicle travelled 73m through the air before crashing into the rainforest. He fled from the vehicle before police arrived, but was eventually found and arrested following a large scale manhunt through bushland west of Smithfield.
Rooney will not be eligible for parole until the end of 2026.