Manslaughter mum released from prison as sentence suspended
THE mother of four-year-old Tyrell Cobb has been sensationally released from jail after a judge could not determine whether she fatally hit the child, or her ex-partner did.
Queensland’s newly-minted Attorney-General, Shannon Fentiman, has already sought urgent advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions about appealing Heidi Strbak’s five-year sentence, which almost halved a previous nine-year term thrown out by the High Court.
Supreme Court Justice David Boddice ordered Strbak’s sentence be suspended after the 1148 days – just over three years – she had already spent in custody.
Strbak, 37, was resentenced after she successfully appealed an earlier nine-year jail term for manslaughter in the High Court.
After that, Strbak pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Tyrell, who died from blunt force trauma injuries to his abdomen, only on the basis that she failed to seek medical treatment for her son.
Justice Boddice found the blunt force trauma that caused Tyrell’s death could have been inflicted by either Strbak or her former de facto partner, Matthew Scown.
He said the Crown had failed to establish that it was Strbak who inflicted the traumatic injuries to Tyrell’s abdomen that caused his death, adding there was evidence of past violence by Scown to Tyrell and he had given substantial inconsistent accounts.
“There is a real and reasonable likelihood that Tyrell’s traumatic injuries were occasioned by the deliberate infliction of violence by Scown to Tyrell,” the judge said.
In 2017, Scown was sentenced to four years in prison for Tyrell’s manslaughter but was immediately released, because he had already served two years and eight months in custody.
He was sentenced on the basis that he was criminally negligent because he failed to get medical treatment for the child.