It had apparently forty two stubbies and thirty bongs, and despite ingesting so many substances, he was still able to produce a gun, and although his judgment was impaired, his aim was not impaired.

In this case, the target wasn't an empty shop, but someone who fought fire with gunfire.

I'm Andrew Ruhland's life and crimes.

We often wonder what happens when people dare to defend their homes against intruders, and this is a subject that is becoming more relevant every week, particularly in Melbourne and of course in some other parts of Australia, notably Aulic Springs and probably Darwin and certain other hotspots around the country where home invasions rife, and to use the words of one magistrate, crime is rampant.

We have a situation where people, ordinary householders, or at least certain householders, who are thinking, how can I defend my home and my family and myself, and how will the law view it if I do?

How far can I go?

Now this is a thorny subject, but it seems to me that with some exceptions, that those few people who have taken up arms against intruders in their own house have by and large not been prosecuted by the law.

Now there are exceptions to this, but it's interesting that although the official police attitude and the attitude of the government authorities and so on is do not take on intruders, do not offer his distance, do not get in their way, Just play safety first at all times.

If you've got to throw them the carkeys or whatever it is, just do it.

And that by and largely good advice.

And we would not be advocating for people to do anything rash or stupid and dangerous, because they shouldn't do it.

But some people in some circumstances will and have, and it's possible that some people that have defended themselves bits of scllywags themselves.

The most notable example of self defense, of course, in this jurisdiction is mcgatto, who shot Andrew Venemon in a very quiet, small space in a restaurant in Carlton, and he was finally acquitted on self defense, but because he said he'd been attacked by a notorious hitman who did have form for shooting people and carrying guns and so on and so forth, and so that really wasn't a great example of intruders getting into your house in the suburbs and looking for your car, keys, or your wallet or whatever.

Let's go through a few of these.

In nineteen ninety two, a shooter's advocate, an activist called Laurie Morris sat up in an empty house that he owned.

I think it had been his mother's house, and he owned it, and it was empty, and he knew that people were regularly coming to that house and looting it, breaking in and they were stripping it of valuables.

It was a house I think in Malverne or that district, and there were features of the house that we were stealing and people were stealing them, and he got heartily sick of it.

He was a sporting shooter, responsible licensed shooter, not a lunatic, and not a criminal, and in the end he could stopped these thefts happening.

And he went and sat up in that house at night.

Now I'm not sure how many nights he spent there, but he spent nights there, and sure as eggs are eggs, three intruders turned up one night.

There was a confrontation and Laurie Morris shot one of these intruders, and that intruder I have to say, ended up grievously injured.

He ended up I think with a permanent colostomy bag.

It meant that he couldn't.

As he said to media later on this intruder, he said, you know, I can't play with my son in the park and run around the way that I want to with my children, etc.

Et cetera.

All of which was true, and it's a terrible thing.

However, he and two others thought it was fine to steal stuff from somebody's house, and in the end he ran into a homeowner that fought pack.

The interesting point here is that although there was a lot of debate about this, because Laurie Morris was in fact a prominent sporting shooter who was a known advocate for gun ownership, etc.

He had a sort of political view to push.

Morris became a slightly notorious case, but he was acquitted of any charges that were leveled and everyone went home.

The injured intruder went home with his bullet wounds and Laurie Morris went home with his reputation and his wallet.

Intact, didn't go to jail, not even fined, I believe, and ultimately he was acquitted of home defense using a firearm.

There have been other examples.

Some have gone one way, some have gone the other.

I'll just throw in one now from the opposite side.

And that was in twenty fourteen a fellow called Ivan Dangelo, the Apostrophe Angelo.

He got eight for manslaughter.

Now there's some interesting things here that make it rather different from Laurie Morris's experience.

Similar was this, Ivan knew that people were breaking into his workshop where I think he used to sleep something.

They're breaking into his workshop in Thomastown and stealing stuff, and he had started to sleep there or whatever, and he was sleeping there.

And on this particular night that three intruders turned up to break into his workshop in Thomastown, Ivan had a big night.

It had apparently forty two stubbies and thirty bongs.

And despite ingesting so many substances, he was still able to produce a gun.

And although his judgment was impaired, I'd suggest that if he was dead sober, he might not have opened fire quite so readily.

His aim was pa and he hit at least one of these fellows and shot him dead.

And he was subsequently charged with manslaughter, and he was sentenced to eight years in prison, and the judge and jury took a fairly dim view of his actions.

The fact that he was nearly blind drunk when he did it probably didn't help his cause.

If you're defending your home as opposed to just running around in circles because you're drunken off your head on dope, it's probably not going to play that well in court.

And it did not, and he got eight years in the slammer, or he was at least sentenced to eight years in the slammer.

He shot dead a twenty seven year old young man called Wade Vandenberg.

Recently we've had the case I'm just picking a few at random.

We've had the case of Mick Moldouse, former tough a defender in the VFL an AFL world who became a tough AFL coach.

Mick Malthouse, flinty, hard little man, little by AFL standards, not little anywhere else.

Came out of Ballarat from sort of the tough side of the tracks.

I think he might have grown up in a house and commission stayed up there and probably the society didn't do him a lot of favors, and he fought his way up the greasy pole of sport, football and everything else by dint of his own determination and his own efforts and his own courage, and probably the sort of guy who you wouldn't really want to rob, because he'd be pretty willing to have a shot back.

When some intruders intruded on his property at East Melbourne this year, he didn't have a gun, but he did have an exercise bar, which is another word for an iron bar, and he took his own bar, which he always called an exercise because it was part of exercise equipment.

Of course, he just happened to have it beside the bed, and he went downstairs and he chased away three men, one of whom actually kicked him or something like.

There was a bit of a grape I think, one of them Hurtinghm with a screwdriver a small wound, but anyway, the screwdriver was no match for Mick and his iron bar, and he dispensed a bit of summary justice, and later on the police got hold of these people, I think, and I would have thought that nearly all Victorians, if not all Australians, would have been barracking for Mick Malthouse in that incident.

He took what was at hand and took them on.

Now the police did not recommend doing that, but Mick Malthouse, like a lot of people of his character, he's not one to take a backward step.

We recall that with the late great Ron Morassi when he saw a la he being attacked or mugged or robbed or something in Saint Kilda at a pavement cafe.

I think it was Barasi, who was then I think in his seventies at that stage, jumped up and intervened and tried to grab the offender, the attacker, and I think was knocked over for his troubles.

But it shows you the caliber of the man and of people like him.

They're not going to back down.

And speaking of people who don't back down, we're talking about January the seventh, last year, in twenty twenty four.

And the way I've written this story is this way, and we try and stick to the written form because our lawyers are very keen for us to be very careful how we describe people and events, and so with a few minor variations, I'm going to stick to the written form of this story, which I find quite interesting.

The raiders in this case came prepared to do maximum harm.

Between three of them, they had three axes, a jerry can of petrol and an aerosol can of a very common solvent WD forty, all bought under a false name to go with the gloves, the disposable black clothes and makeshift balaclavas.

They make them up out of T shirts.

Interestingly, they can twist a T shirt around so they can see through the hole and tied off in a not instant bala.

There you go.

It's one of those little skills that young people learn these days.

In some postcodes.

They also had false number plates fitted to the Toyota kluger that they drove to the scene of the crime.

Our friends at Toyota would point out that the Toyota is a very reliable combinents at all times, and in this case it was extremely reliable, more reliable than the people driving it.

Any doubt that this was a criminal enterprise vanished when the three directed by a fourth man.

So this is a conspiracy smashed through a bedroom window of a house in Middle Mount Street, Donnybrook, which used to be farm country.

I can recall now an outer suburb to the north of Melbourne out there past Eppingham so on it's four eighteen am on this particular morning, January seventh, last year, twenty twenty four.

When they break the windows with the axes, it showers the room, the bedroom with broken glass.

In the bedroom in bed is a terrified woman, a woman called Taylor Grannan, and she's sort of the lady of the house.

She is the partner or girlfriend of the chappoose of the co tenant.

Taylor is sleeping alone on this particular occasion for reasons that will become clear, and she leaped from the bed and crouched again a wall, absolutely terrified, but was struck on her left leg with an axe, gashing it very badly.

Well it would it's an axe.

Taylor screamed that she was pregnant, and the attackers, thank goodness, left her alone and ran from the room towards the back of the house, clearly looking for her partner, a chap called Darcy Current now Darcy Karen.

I think it was a twenty eight year old fellow.

We don't know a lot about Darcy, but I think he's not a shrinking violet.

I think Darcy might be a robust individual, and I think It's possible that Darcy had an inkling that some people were out to take property of his, possibly money, or possibly something else.

But he probably might have been expecting trouble.

Darcy Curran, who later told police he had been sleeping in the backyard, which I suppose on a hot January night you might do.

Unted the men, the three men with the axes, and they found.

Those men found they'd made the fatal mistake of bringing access to a gunfight.

Curran, and this is where the lawyers tell us to be careful.

Curran took hold of a firearm, its origin uncertain, and fired several shots.

He hit two of the attackers, one man, a man whose name we are not going to use here, but we'll call him Harry.

He fled with a third man, which his mates called Babyface.

We don't know who he is.

We actually don't know who Babyface is or was, but his nickname that they used in text messages was Babyface.

So the wounded fellow and a third man rush off to the tout kluger and drive away.

They head for hospital.

The third of the raiders, of called Joseph Romano, wasn't running anywhere because he'd been shot in the chest.

First responders worked on Joseph Romano on the Nature Strip, but he was declared dead at five oh one am.

So the attack happens at four eighteen and within probably twenty five seconds or something.

There's lots of shooting by Darcy Curran, who lives at the house.

We're not sure where the gun came from, but apparently Darcy was able to put his hand on it.

It's possible that he took it from one of the attackers.

It's possible the wounded man and his mate Babyface, drove to the Northern Hospital and he was captured on security cameras there just before four point thirty struggling out of the back seat of the toyota.

He was then taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital with gunshot wounds to the back and buttocks.

So he apparently had turned around and was heading outwards when he was shot.

Because he got wounds in the back and the buttocks.

It would take Taylor Grannan another half hour to get to the same hospital, the Northern Hospital, to have her leg wound attended to.

This, of course, is the leg wound inflicted by the axe.

Meanwhile, her partner, the quick thinking shooter Darcy Curran left the house in the minutes before police arrived.

Interestingly, another blog whose name we are not going to use here, but we'll call him the fourth Beetle, was one of the conspirators to do the raid.

But he wasn't on the raid.

He wasn't one of the three axe wielding people.

He'd helped set it up.

He's not there, but he's keeping track of what's happening now.

If this Darcy Curran was some sort of Havigo hero, as we say in newspapers, he was very modest about it and not anxious to burden the police with details of his home, defence or the possible reasons for the attack.

The twenty eight year old and at Sea's age, was not interviewed until later after a gun was recovered from a house in a nearby suburb of Dorhen, So it would appear that Darcy and possibly the gun ended up in do Rhen pretty rapidly after this shooting.

There was stark evidence of the chaos at the Middle Mount Street house in Donnybrook.

The chaos would suggest there have been a very grievous Donnybrook at Donnybrook.

Police and ambulance officers found an axe on the floor of the front bedroom, and they found two other axes that had been dropped on the front lawn by the two fleeing and terrified raiders, one of them wounded.

Empty cartridge cases, all fired from the same weapon, were strewn around the place.

Meanwhile, elsewhere it was time for the remnants of the raiding party to clean up after themselves, or try to.

It turned out that they weren't much better at this part of the operation than in the absolute debarcle of the raid itself.

At eight twenty five am that morning, so this is about four hours after the bungled raid.

Joseph Romano's Joseph, He's the Dead guy.

Joseph Romano's holden Colorado was caught on CCTV traveling in tandem with the Kluger getaway car at Beveridge, which is further north than Donnybrook Beverages, where nen Kelly was born and raised, in fact, just past Craigieburn at nine twenty two am, so that's another hour again.

Nine twenty two am, the Colorado was found on fire on the Old Sydney Road, but this attempted to failed and Romano's phone was found in the vehicle still functional.

Well, this is very handy for the police.

It wasn't part of the plan to leave the phone there and not burn it.

The police got hold of the phone, which wasn't even scorched, and they were able to retrieve a trove of incriminating encrypted signal messages it held, which allowed them to build a clear sequence of events by these young crooks.

They were very young, these guys.

A couple of them are nineteen.

The dead guy I think was nineteen, and the other wounded guy was nineteen, and I think Babyface was about the same age.

The Kluger toy Kluger was set alight in Belfast Avenue, broad Meadows, so that's the second car they've torched.

Later that morning, but by that time police were already preparing to arrest wounded man in hospital.

The wounded man we will call Harry, which is not his real name.

Harry is a name that we've just made up on the run, so it bears no real resemblance to this man.

The signal message exchanges that the investigators uncovered revealed a chain of events indicating a criminal conspiracy orchestrated from a long way off, much like the rash of arson attacks on tobacco outlets in recent years.

But of course this one a bit less successful because in this case the target wasn't an empty shop but someone who fought fire with gunfire.

This is what the police found out when they cracked the code on the phone.

Not long before the so called Donnybrook Donnybrook, the raiding party set up a group chat on signal.

This is how the police use phones.

Very good at it.

Now Harry had to handle G.

He's just called G in these group chats.

The fourth beetle, not his real name was there.

Joseph Romano, who was later deceased, was called jump Man, and the unknown offende as we know, was called Babyface.

So this is on January the sixth, last year, the day before the bungled raid.

These four are chatting on signal to toss around plans with a fifth person known as Carnage.

Now we don't know who that is, and if we did, we probably wouldn't name him.

Carnage is almost certainly some sort of left tenant for an absentee criminal overlord.

He will be a right hand man doing the dirty work in setting up the dirty work back home here in Melbourne for a paymaster who is somewhere in the Middle East or somewhere else like that.

Now, this carnage so called, he either rosary early or he stayed up all night, as it was five fifty seven am, that's just before six o'clock when he sent a group message asking for the clothing sizes of those in the group.

Three hours later, Harry was up and about.

He provided a shopping list for the fourth beetle, and the list said three large jumpers, three large pants, three bes of shoes, two in size ten and one in size thirteen, so someone had big feet, and three T shirts to be used as bella clavers.

Now Harry then transmitted a bunning shopping list asking for the three axes and a spray can of WD forty.

Fourth beetle responded with one word sweet or purpose word r handy.

The fourth beetle who is twenty four years old, so he's five years older than the silly young blugs they sent to do the job.

This beetle drove to Bunnings in Hawthorne, a store with which this department is very familiar.

It's a very fine shop with lots of good products, and that's why the crooks went there.

They wanted good products.

And he bought the three Trojan brand fiberglass axes, nothing but the best three pairs of clubs, a five liter red Jerry can, and of course that pressure can of w D forty.

He made the purchase under the name Matthew Trotter, an alias he'd used previously.

Well, that tells you that this was a crooked transaction where he's up to no good because he's using the false ID and that he used it before, which means he was the sort of bloke who uses false ID, which some would consider a mark of criminality.

Fourth Beetle Fellow also bought the home invasion costumes, anonymous and disposable clothing to be worn then destroyed, so they're all in black and they all look much the same and then they burn it.

That's the theory.

By twelve fifty three that day that this is the day before the raid.

The sixth of January, Carnage messaged the Beetle for details about the Donnybrook House.

The Beetle met Romano to hand over the geared bought.

Three hours later, Romano traveled to Clifton Hill in his Holden, Colorado with Harry.

Just after midnight, Carnage was back on signal with a cryptic message that was clear to his co conspirators.

Hectic we in areas now.

I think there's an absent question market in that short message of four words.

I think he's asking if they're all set up in the right area to do the business.

Babyface replied by text, Yeah, my bro, just waiting.

Shortly after four am, Harry, Romano and Babyface the unknown offender headed to Donnybrook in their Toyota Kluger fitted with false plates.

They had the three axes, the Jerrycanna petrol, and that can of w D forty.

Within the hour, of course, Romano was dead, shot dead, nineteen years old.

Probably did this for five hundred bucks or one thousand bucks whatever.

One dead, one wounded, and facing serious charges.

These are the casualties in the dangerous and sometimes deadly war waged by organized crime bosses who recruit disorganized and deluded young pawns to do their dirty work.

The details leading to the raid came to light as investigators unraveled the threat.

Five weeks after the fate raid, and this is on February the fourteenth, this fourth Beetle was arrested at the Berkeley Square shopping center in Brunswick and he was charged after refusing to answer questions or to provide a DNA sample on August the twenty seventh this year, so that's eighteen months afterwards.

The fourth Beetle was sentenced to a minimum two years.

With luck, he'll come home from prison.

Wise to the ways of organized crime bosses who use middlemen and patsies and pawns to insulate themselves from the crimes they plot to enrich themselves.

Higher up the tree than Fourth Beetle in the Donnybrook disaster was the fixer code named Carnage, clearly a trusted lieutenant of one of the handful of puppet masters based overseas beyond the reach of Australian law enforcement.

Meanwhile, officially, Joseph romano death is being investigated by the homicide Squad.

And this is where this gets interesting in the bigger picture.

But after twenty months now, no one has been charged over his death.

Homicide Squad are notionally honor no one's been charged.

It's a sign, perhaps that someone somewhere in the system has judged that in the Donnybrook killing.

A jury is going to be reluctant to convict the man for defending his own home against three axe wielding thugs with a jerry can of petrol.

No one can be dead shore who brought the gun to the axe fight?

Of course, Darcy Karran isn't saying that he did.

Oddly, though, the encrypted telephone messages that openly listed the raiding party's axes and petrol and Balaclavi's never once mentioned a gun.

They didn't say, you know, while you're down there, can you drop into Charlie's and pick up the gun or whatever?

None of that, no mention of Again, what those messages did mention was that the aerosol can of WD forty But what was it for?

Well, you can bet it wasn't for fixing a squeaky car door.

The ugly truth, it seems to me, and this is a throw at the stumps listeners, This is not police evidence.

This is just an observation.

The ugly truth, it seems to me, is that an aerosol can full of flammable solvent could make a cheap off the shelf explosive device is subjected to the sort of heat a petrol fire producers call it a ten buck bomb.

A defense ex lawyer could do quite a lot by flagging that idea, so it's no surprise really that so few people have been charged, let alone convicted, for defending themselves against home invaders, and that dangerous Darcy Curran is one of them.

Thanks for listening.

Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia.

Our producer is Johnny Burton.

For my columns, features and more, go to Heroldsun dot com dot AU, forward slash andrew rule one word.

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