A FORMER Syrian soldier who brutally murdered a Deer Park post office operator – while on parole for another violent crime – has been jailed for 23 years.
But Bacchus Marsh’s Riad Barbour will have to serve the remaining 22 months of a jail term imposed in 2008 for his role in an armed robbery and aggravated burglary before he starts serving the sentence handed down on Friday.
The Supreme Court heard Barbour, 33, bashed Dzung Nguyen, 48, with a truncheon before stabbing him multiple times at his post office on December 6 last year.
The murder, which was captured on CCTV footage, took place soon after Barbour peered up at a security camera outside the premises and waved to the camera. The vision showed he waited until all other staff had left for the day before he approached the business’s rear door and was let inside by Mr Nguyen.
Justice Cameron Macaulay said Barbour had been in discussions with Mr Nguyen and his wife earlier about setting up an account with them.
They were supplying him cigarettes for his milk bar business. But the couple refused to set up a credit account when he could not pay the full amount he owed them.
The vision shows Barbour bashing Mr Nguyen several times over the head with a wooden truncheon while he was bending down.
“An intense struggle then followed,” Justice Macaulay said. “It lasted a number of minutes.
Variously, over that time, you hit Mr Nguyen with the truncheon, punched him, struck him with a stapler you grabbed off the office bench, held him in a headlock and, finally, produced a knife and stabbed him a number of times, first to the body and then to the neck.”
Some of the stab wounds were 20 centimetres deep, the court heard.
After killing Mr Nguyen, Barbour helped himself to the post office safe, stealing more than $12,000.
When he was arrested at his Bacchus Marsh home two days later, he had spent the money on gambling and buying drugs.
Barbour pleaded guilty to murder and theft.
The court heard he had been a victim of violence at the hands of his alcoholic father and had witnessed a fellow Syrian soldier being shot and killed on patrol.
The judge sentenced the father of two to 22 years’ jail for the murder and two years’ jail for theft, one year of which is to be served concurrently with the murder sentence.
-The Age
