A 26 year old man was fatally stabbed in the chest in his new home.
Crime: Murder
Occurred: 15 July 2011
Where: 44 Princes Highway, Dandenong
Sentenced: 5 April 2013
Convicted: Boronika Gam Hothnyang
Victim: William Awu
What happened?
William and Boronika, both Sudanese, belonged to a group of friends who enjoyed drinking and socialising. Around mid-July 2011 Boronika allowed William to move in with her.
On 15 July, Boronika, William and three other friends, including her boyfriend, rose at 8:30am to continue a drinking binge that had started the day before. Throughout the day more people visited the house, some for a short time, some hanging around all day.
As Boronika drank, she also grew more aggressive and agitated. She was upset when her boyfriend taunted her that she came to Australia from Kenya rather than Egypt, and she left the house to pay a visit to the Dandenong branch of the Department of Human Services to complain about a door in her home that needed fixing.
When she returned home, William drew a caricature of Boronika that depicted her as being overweight. Her boyfriend laughed at the picture and teased her about it. Angry, Boronika told William to stop drawing pictures like that and that both men should stop the taunting or there would be consequences.
At around 2.15pm in the afternoon, after her boyfriend went back to bed, Boronika was witnessed by friends as putting her arm around William's neck so that he struggled to breath. Two friends made Boronika back off, and she continued drinking until 4pm when she announced she was going to bed.
Soon after, Boronika emerged from the bedroom, walked into the kitchen and grabbed a knife, holding it behind her back as she approached William, who was passed out in the corner of the room. She stabbed him once to the chest. He died of blood loss at the scene.
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| Boronika used a kitchen knife similar to this one to attack her friend (source). |
Born in Sudan, William was the third child among ten children. He fled to Egypt in 2002 and moved to Australia with his family in 2004. He studied English for a brief period and later worked as a farm labourer in Victoria and New South Wales. He also had a talent for drawing caricatures. He was unemployed at the time of his death.
Soon after his arrival in Australia, he developed a drinking problem and fell in with the wrong crowd. At the time of his murder his blood alcohol reading was 0.42. Six weeks before he was killed, he was hospitalised for pulmonary tuberculosis and told to quit smoking and drinking.
All ten of William's siblings, as well as his mother, provided victim impact statements to the Court.
Convicted's background
Boronika was 24 years old at the time of the murder. She was one of six children, born in the Sudan. Her father was a factory worker and her mother was the primary caregiver. Boronika never attended school. Despite the civil war raging in her country, she reported to have a happy childhood, although she moved to Egypt when she was 13 years old, accompanied by an abusive brother and an aunt who the judge described as "cruel, sadistic and manipulative".
Life in Egypt was tough. She worked as a domestic servant and endured abuse. Around this time she had an older boyfriend who she fell pregnant to, but suffered a late miscarriage.
She came to Australia around the age of 15 or 16 and, similar to William, fell in with the wrong crowd and began drinking heavily. She fell pregnant again, and this time was allegedly forced to undergo an abortion by her aunty. She attempted suicide soon after. She fell pregnant again to the same boyfriend but he broke up with her.
She went on to have three children borne to three abusive fathers. She continued to drink throughout her pregnancies. All three children were placed into the custody of the Department of Human Services at some point in their early childhood, in relation to Boronika's alcoholism. One of the fathers was also suspected of sexually abusing one or more of her children.
Boronika was admitted into psychiatric units in hospitals on several different occasions in relation to suicide attempts and threats of harm to her children. Each incident was accompanied by heavy drinking. Each time she was hospitalised, away from the influence of alcohol she was able to make a recovery. However, upon being released she would relapse back into her former lifestyle.
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| 44 Princes Highway, Boronika's home and where the murder occurred (source). |
Sentence: 10 years and 6 months before eligible for parole (14 years max), with over a year of her sentence already served while on remand.
Factors that were taken into account to reach this sentence were: Boronika's prospects for rehabilitation, her young age, the time she would spend away from her children, her lack of premeditation, lack of prior offending, her remorse (although she could not remember the offence she did demonstrate sadness at having killed her friend), her age and what the Judge described as her 'horrific background and personal circumstances'. Balanced against these elements were punishment, deterrence, the seriousness of the offence and denunciation. The Judge also commented in passing that: 'All of this is such a sad reflection on our society, that we have groups of seemingly dispossessed men and women who have been brought here as refugees, with little or nothing to do except drink their days away.'
This case was unsuccessfully appealed in 2014.
You can read the judgment here. News articles are available here, here and here.
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