A helmet-wearing assailant who fatally stabbed a customer at a Sydney barbershop without warning has been jailed for at least 14 years.
Alfredo Isho was seated and gowned when he was knifed at Bossley Park’s Classico Hair Studio in 2019, with the blade puncturing his right lung and severing an artery.
His killer, Fredon Laith Botrus, had lapped the barbershop four times on his motorbike to identify his target before entering through a rear door and attacking Isho.
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Botrus, now 20, was on Tuesday jailed by the NSW Supreme Court for 20 years, with a non-parole period of 14 years.
While accepting Botrus hadn’t intended to kill, Justice Michael Walton said the attack was brazen, targeted and senseless.
The court had no evidence of any remorse, motive or animosity between the two men before the murder on January 11, 2019.
“It must be found the deceased had no warning of the attack and was unable to defend himself,” Walton said.
Isho’s family had earlier told the court their kind, gentle and smart Alfredo had never been in trouble nor said anything bad about anyone.
“The longest walk you will ever take is the one down the road of grief,” his mother, Khalida Thom, said at his sentencing hearing in February.
Botrus denied being the disguised attacker from the moment he was arrested wearing a jumper covered in Isho’s blood on the day of the fatal attack.
He also denied being the person behind the wickr account “YoCatchMe”, which received a message before the stabbing about the barbershop.
Using a mix of Arabic, English and emoji, the message said in effect: “Yo brother there’s a dog at the hairdresser’s.”
After the stabbing, the account replied by saying “I went and (sh)anked him” and “is that bad”.
Consistent with the jury’s verdict in September, finding Botrus guilty of murder, Walton found Botrus was behind the account.
But he found the comment “is that bad”, boasting and indifference in the encrypted conversation and the irrationality of Botrus riding a loud bike closely linked to him to commit a serious crime spoke to his immaturity and lack of impulse control.
Botrus’s dysfunctional childhood, which included being kidnapped in his native Iraq and dealing with the more recent suicide of a brother in Australia, also reduced his moral culpability.
“Whilst the offending was not spontaneous, there was evidence of limited planning without long premeditation,” Walton said.
Botrus will be eligible for parole in January 2033.
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