A gun-toting robber, involved in the beating of a woman over an alleged debt, used a machete to brutally murder a man as a teenager.
The robber, who was 17 at the time of the killing, faced the start of sentencing proceedings for his most recent crime in the ACT Supreme Court on Tuesday.
University graduate Liang Zhao was killed on Northbourne Avenue, Braddon, in 2011 by the teenager and his co-offender, Taylor Schmidt.
The Canberra Times has chosen to refer to the man's role in the death of Mr Zhao and therefore cannot name him because he was a child at the time.
After a judge-alone trial last year, Justice Verity McWilliam found the unnamed man guilty of joint commission aggravated robbery more than a decade after the killing.
'Savage' beating over alleged debt
The judge found that in July 2022, the man carried a firearm, concealed by a jumper or a jacket, into the home of a woman he was friends with.
In the victim's bedroom, two other robbers started punching the woman while he sat nearby, the gun now uncovered and lying on his lap.
During the assault, the woman looked to the man for help but he "looked back at her without any expression", Justice McWilliam stated in a judgment published last year.
"When the[victim] was hit to the point where she received a cut above her eye, the accused said, 'that's savage'."
The victim gave evidence during the trial that she owed one of the robbers $400 after borrowing money to pay for a skip when her father died.
She recounted being repeatedly punched in the face and body, having a handful of hair ripped from her scalp, and one of her front teeth pushed back.
On Tuesday, prosecutor Marcus Dyason said the victim "would have feared for her life" when the man revealed the gun.
"The revealing of the firearm, at that point, would have drastically increased her level of fear, stress and anxiety," he said.
Defence lawyer Tim Sharman said the judge had "limited" options in deciding how to sentence his client.
'Unprovoked' brutal murder
A judge previously described the 2011 attack as ''unprovoked, cowardly, brutal, indescribably vicious and ultimately fatal".
Late one night in August more than a decade ago, Mr Zhao, 27, was walking along the busy road in the hope of being picked up by his mother, after arriving at the Jolimont Centre on a bus from Melbourne.
Instead, he encountered the teenager and Schmidt on the footpath.
The pair were armed with a machete and a baseball bat, and had left a nearby flat with the intention of robbing someone.
They knocked Mr Zhao to the ground, dragging him from the footpath.
The pair stole $21 in cash and his mobile phone, before Schmidt struck him with a baseball bat.
Mr Zhao cried out, and the 17-year-old warned him to be quiet and not tell the police. He then hit him in the wrist with the machete, prompting more screaming.
The pair then began attacking Mr Zhao with the weapons, inflicting fatal wounds.
The teenager was sentenced to 17 years jail, which was to be suspended after 10 years and six months upon entering into a good behaviour order.
His sentence for the most recent crimes is set to be handed down later this week.
