‘Someone’s going to die’

Man pointed ‘gun’ at mother and boy, 8

A YOUNG boy screamed for help from his bedroom window while his mum blocked a bedroom door after a man pointed a gun at them during a terrifying home invasion.

Arborist Todd Mark Rowsell, 30, stood outside the woman’s bedroom on August 8 last year and shouted “someone’s going to die” while pointing the weapon, which was later found to be a toy gun, at the woman and eight-year-old boy who had been sleeping in the bed. Her two-year-old daughter had also been sleeping on the couch at the time.

The Cairns District Court heard the man left after the boy began yelling out the window and the toddler began screaming, but sent her text messages saying “shut your f---ing mouth” and “loose lips sink ships”.

The court heard Rowsell was taken into custody the next day at a Cairns shopping centre in a major sting involving the Special Emergency Response Team.

Crown prosecutor Christian Peters said the two were known to each other as she was friends with his long-term partner.

He began sending her abusive text messages after finding out she had made derogatory comments about him.

Mr Peters said she became fearful and locked up the house before lying down on the bed with her son. The court heard after Rowsell left the house the woman heard a loud noise which she feared was a gunshot.

Upon his arrest police found him in possession of knuckle dusters and a credit card knife. The court heard they also searched his partner’s car, which he had been using, and home, and found a toy gun in an envelope and a glass pipe.

He pleaded guilty to burglary with threats or violence, three counts of weapons possession and one count of utensil possession.

Defence barrister Joseph Jacobs said the woman and children had not been physically harmed and the gun was not real.

“In my respectful submission the threats … were at a relatively low level,” he said.

He told the court Rowsell was likely only inside the house for under three minutes and the “level of fear” the woman felt could be gauged by her response in telling him to “f--- off”.

He said his client had been a hard worker all his life, including returning to work just two days after cutting through his finger with a chainsaw.

Rowsell has been in custody since his August arrest last year and Judge Dean Morzone granted him immediate parole after sentencing him to three years jail.