DESCENT INTO DARK ROAD TO TRAGEDY
THE PARENTS OF MURDERED MAN MICHAEL MCCABE HAVE A STARK WARNING FOR YOUNG FOLKS DABBLING IN DRUGS LIKE ICE – THEY CAN LEAD YOU INTO BAD COMPANY WHERE THE CONSEQUENCES CAN BE DEADLY. REPORTS
SAM BIDEY
Holden Commodore and drove him to the isolated scene of his murder, where large rocks were hurled at him until he stopped breathing.
Huxley and Taylor may be the only men who will ever know for certain who threw the fatal rock on to the skull of Mr Mccabe, but each has been found guilty of murder by a jury in Townsville Supreme Court.
Huxley was a drug addict and at his sentencing the court heard he also supplied methamphetamine to people in Mr Mccabe’s circle.
A stocky, tattoo-covered thug, Brent Huxley’s criminal history included threatening to kill others over money.
At Huxley’s trial, key witness Darren Hess testified that in August 2015, Huxley visited him more than once and told him he had killed Mr Mccabe.
“He said he’d done a hit on a fella for $10,000, told me he dropped a rock on him and showed me his actions how he’d done it,” he said.
Taylor was also consumed
in a world of drugs at the time of the killing.
He was couch surfing with no real home and was friends with Huxley but had never met Mr Mccabe.
If it wasn’t for Taylor’s interviews with police, Mr Mccabe’s body may never have been found and justice never served.
Taylor gave several interviews to police, divulging more information on each occasion and despite initially claiming no involvement in the murder, he eventually admitted to being with Huxley as the rocks were hurled at Mr Mccabe on the night of August 15, 2015.
Just a few hours earlier Mr Mccabe was injecting methamphetamine with a young woman he had just met – Candis Greer.
Ms Greer had driven with Leonie Doyle, the girlfriend of Huxley, to Charters Towers and picked up Mr Mccabe.
As the three made their way back to Kirwan, Mr Mccabe and Ms Greer flirted in the back of the car.
Ms Greer had split with her boyfriend Matthew Luke Horima Rewha only a few days before.
Jason Taylor would tell police it was Rewha who initiated the attack on Mr Mccabe at the Burnda St apartment but a jury found Rewha not guilty of assault occasioning bodily harm.
Regardless of who started the attack, Mr Mccabe never had a chance to defend himself.
He was outnumbered and overpowered.
He was beaten, bound and in the
Danny trash”.
His killers showed a complete disregard for human life and the impact Mr Mccabe’s death would have on others.
Danny Mccabe said in the four years since his son’s murder he had lived with depression.
Not a day passes that he doesn’t think of his boy and wish he could have done something to save him.
“My son is dead, why didn’t I protect him, why didn’t I see the evil that had entered his words of “thrown his father away like