An Australian man has been sentenced to life in jail for murdering six people and injuring 27 more in a vehicle attack in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
James Gargasoulas, 29, deliberately ploughed a stolen car into pedestrians in the city centre in January 2017.<\/p>\n
He later told a court in a confusing speech that he had carried out the attack after receiving a premonition.<\/p>\n
On Friday, a judge described it as one of the worst mass murders in Australian history.<\/p>\n
“You made no attempt to avoid people or to slow down. You simply ploughed through them, quite deliberately,” Justice Mark Weinberg said, according to\u00a0a report by Seven News<\/a>.<\/p>\n The attack killed three-month-old Zachary Bryant, Thalia Hakin, 10, Jess Mudie, 22, Yosuke Kanno, 25, Bhavita Patel, 33, and Matthew Si, 33.<\/p>\n Gargasoulas will be eligible for parole after 46 years.<\/p>\n He had pleaded not guilty to the attack on busy Bourke St, but later admitted to carrying it out.<\/p>\n During his trial last year, a jury was shown graphic footage of Gargasoulas, also known by the name Dimitrious, targeting pedestrians at speeds of more than 60km\/h (37mph).<\/p>\n His youngest victim, Zachary Bryant, was struck alongside his sister in a double pram. Miraculously, two-year-old Zara somehow survived being thrown 150m (500ft) through the air.<\/p>\n Other footage showed Gargasoulas driving erratically beforehand, as dozens of bystanders watched on.<\/p>\n Gargasoulas testified that he had received a premonition from God directing him to drive into pedestrians. When asked whether he knew he would kill people, he said: “In a sense, yes.”<\/p>\n He also read a two-page statement – cut down from 25 pages – in which he apologised for his actions, but also rambled about subjects such as the “Illuminati” and government “oppression”.<\/p>\n A jury took less than an hour to convict him last year<\/a>, after what prosecutors called “the clearest case of criminal liability that you will ever come across”.<\/p>\n In his sentencing remarks, Justice Weinberg said Gargasoulas’s actions were not caused by mental illness, noting the killer had been in a drug-induced psychosis at the time.<\/p>\n “You knew full well what you were doing,” Justice Weinberg said.<\/p>\n Several relatives of the victims had spoken of their devastation in court.<\/p>\n Zachary’s father, Matthew Bryant, said: “I listened to his heartbeat and held him for the last time trying desperately to hold onto the moment. He had a lifetime of firsts taken from him and all the joys that come with it.”<\/p>\n Masayuki and Minako Kanno said they were living in “deep pain and sorrow” after the death of their son, Yosuke, a Japanese student who had been studying in Melbourne.<\/p>\n The city later installed concrete bollards<\/a>\u00a0and added more security measures, however\u00a0it was rocked by another vehicle attack in December 2017<\/a>.<\/p>\n Three months ago,\u00a0Bourke St was the scene of an unrelated terror incident<\/a>\u00a0that left one victim dead and two others injured.<\/p>\n Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"