A father and son have been sentenced over a violent robbery that left an elderly man with a fractured skull after a firearm deal went wrong.
37-year-old Paul Wayne Simpson and his father Paul Stanley Simpson, 76, were sentenced in the Supreme Court on July 30.
A jury found the younger Simpson guilty of wounding and demanding property with menaces, while his father was found guilty of stealing $1,000. The son also pleaded guilty to firearm offences.
The charges arose from an incident at the father’s home on April 16, 2022.
The court heard one of two visitors wanted to buy a firearm to shoot wallaby for meat but did not have a licence.
Through mutual friends, a meeting was arranged for that man and a friend to meet the younger Simpson, who claimed to have a rifle for sale.
The son showed the buyer a photo of a long rifle on his phone, but the man said it was too powerful for what he needed and turned it down.
The son became agitated and accused the two visitors of mucking him around, Justice Kate Cuthbertson said.
He left the house and returned with a bladed weapon, possibly a meat cleaver or tomahawk, then struck the buyer’s friend in the head as he sat on the couch.
The blow caused a heavy bleed and a depressed skull fracture.
The injured man fled the house seeking help, leaving a trail of blood down the driveway.
The son then demanded money from the buyer, threatened to take his knee caps off and pushed him into a chair.
He ordered his father to go with the man to a nearby ATM, where the buyer withdrew $1,000 and handed it over.
Police later searched the son’s Lenah Valley home and found two rifles in a safe, one of them stolen. He was subject to a firearms prohibition order at the time.
The court heard he had spent most of his adult life in custody, including for a 2008 manslaughter in which he killed a man with a baseball bat.
Cuthbertson said his prospects of rehabilitation were “poor” and called the offending “extremely serious”.
“Your resort to significant violence in the circumstances of this case is difficult to comprehend,” she told the younger Simpson.
“On the most benign version of events, there had been no promise to purchase a firearm from you. You were not entitled to expect that any such transaction would take place.”
“Your conduct suggests that you were determined to extract money from [the buyer], whether for the purchase of a firearm or otherwise.”
The son was jailed for four years, backdated to January 23, with a further six months for the firearm offences.
He must serve three years before he is eligible for parole.
His father was given a six-month sentence, wholly suspended for two years.
