A MAN accused of going on an hour-long shooting rampage at Wyong in 2020 during which he fired more than 220 rounds, including one that struck and killed 20-year-old Byron Tonks, should have been scheduled two weeks earlier when he told a psychiatrist he was thinking about killing his neighbours, a jury has been told.
Bradley Jason Mark White, 42, was acutely mentally unwell, needed to be medicated and should have been made an involuntary patient at a secure psychiatric facility, his barrister, Mark Hobart, SC, said during his closing address on Tuesday.
"He needed to be medicated and observed until he was no longer in a murderous rage," Mr Hobart said. "Instead, [the doctor] thought he could have some counselling."
Mr Hobart said Mr White was "so acutely unwell that he couldn't control himself whatsoever" and went on a shooting rampage over a "ridiculous" grievance with his neighbours.
He said the jury would have no doubt Mr White was "so mentally insane" that he did not know what he was doing was wrong.
"This fella is off his rocker," Mr Hobart said of Mr White. "He is totally crazy."
Mr White does not deny firing the two rifles or killing Mr Tonks but he has pleaded not guilty to murder and several other charges and raised defences of mental health impairment and cognitive impairment.
Mr White was angry with neighbours over the road in Cutler Drive on March 17, 2020, when he twice set fire to a car and then began firing two guns from his verandah and inside his house.
He shot at people in the street, striking one man in the shoulder and a woman in the back, fired upon responding police and pumped bullets into eight cars and a number of houses across the road, next door and behind his property.
At one point during the relentless barrage of bullets, Byron Tonks, who had driven to a house in Cutler Drive to help, screamed out from the front room: "I've been hit".
Ultimately, as Mr White continued shooting into the house, police had to remove the three injured people through the backyard. Byron Tonks was treated by paramedics but died at the scene. The jury should retire to begin deliberating on Wednesday.
