LOOKOUT FOR BRUTAL MURDER
Girl pleads guilty to murder
HER admitted role was to act as a look-out as two men carried out a planned armed robbery which escalated into a brutal execution.
She was 16 and in the company of Peter Noel Stephens, 20, and Daniel Michael Hallin, 22, when, on December 24, 2001, at Helidon’s James Norman Hedges Park, a man suffered a violent, shocking death.
The girl, who has never been named, pleaded guilty to murder for her role in the violent death of Kenneth Doig who was struck twice in the head with a tomahawk as he lay face-down on the ground.
She never cast any of the fatal blows, nor was she involved in the subsequent shooting of Kenneth Doig’s twin brother Brett or his mother Helen that same night.
But it was accepted by the Toowoomba Supreme Court she was guilty of felony murder because Kenneth Doig had been killed in the course of the robbery in which she had agreed to take part.
The plan had been for Hallin and Stephens to rob a man who may have entered the Helidon park on Christmas Eve, and the girl would keep watch from a distance.
The trio was running low on cash. Kenneth Doig was robbed of his wallet and car keys during what Justice Anthe Philippides described as a “brutal execution” during sentencing of the two men.
Stephens cut Kenneth Doig’s throat with a filleting knife and, with help from Hallin, bundled him into the boot of his own car and drove from the scene.
Likewise, the girl had no part in the shooting of Kenneth’s brother Brett and his mother Helen who, on seeing his car had stopped.
Stephens and Hallin panicked, shooting Brett and Helen before fleeing into bushland.
The two men and the girl were later found hiding after an extensive search of the area. The girl’s sentencing hearing in January 2003 was told she hadn’t handled any weapon but had driven away from the scene as directed when Stephens and Hallin first approached Kenneth Doig.
The worst of the callous offending was done by Hallin and Stephens who worked together to load their murder victim’s body into the boot of the car with the intention of disposing of it.
Justice Anthe Philippides sentenced the girl to six years’ detention, with 440 days presentence custody declared as already served.
Hallin and Stephens each received life sentences.