Chilling message written in blood

A TEENAGER who stabbed a service station attendant to death during a violent crime spree in southern NSW dipped his fingers in his victim’s blood and scrawled “IS” on the window.

Details of the crimes of the teenager and his accomplice, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were revealed in documents tendered as the pair faced a sentence hearing in the NSW Supreme Court yesterday.

They were aged 16 and 15 respectively when they attacked 29-year-old Zeeshan Akbar ( pictured) inside a Queanbeyan Caltex in April 2017.

Both have pleaded guilty to murder and several other offences related to their rampage on the evening of April 6 and morning of April 7.

Mr Akbar died in a pool of blood after being stabbed three times by the offender identified as DM who was 16 years old at the time.

The Pakistani student let the pair inside the Bungendore Road service station using his swipe card about 11.46pm.

The agreed statement of facts revealed DM stabbed Mr Akbar in the back before putting his hand around his neck.

The other teen, known as DS, jumped the counter and attempted to remove a cash register while DM continued to stab Mr Akbar at the rear of the store.

“(DM) approached Akbar who was lying on the floor, (DM) dipped his finger in Akbar’s blood, walked to the glass window, and wrote the letter ‘I’ on it,” a statement of agreed facts said.

“He then returned to Akbar, once again dipped his finger in his blood, walked to the glass window, and wrote the letter ‘S’.” The pair made off with the cash register and cigarettes.

Crown prosecutor Mark Hobart SC described the crime as “chilling” and “one of the worst I’ve ever seen”.

The murder was captured on CCTV and Justice Geoffrey Bellew refused to release the footage to the media because it was so disturbing.

Justice Bellew described Mr Akbar as someone who came to Australia and “made every post a winner”.

“He came to the country to make a better life,” Justice Bellew said. Earlier in the night, DM told friends he had “joined ISIS” and showed them a picture on his phone of a man standing beside a severed human head.

When he was arrested, DM yelled out “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, I’m going to cut your heads off. There is only one God”.

The teens’ crime spree ended after a police pursuit when they were caught on the Monaro Highway in the ACT.