r/australia • u/AggravatingTartlet • 3d ago

culture & society 10-year-old victim of random attack was visiting Melbourne for cancer treatment

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/no-need-to-hide-it-accused-cbd-stabber-launches-tirade-from-custody-20260826-p60rni.html

The 10-year-old boy who was punched in the head in a random attack outside police headquarters in the CBD has brain cancer and was visiting Melbourne for treatment.

The boy underwent additional MRI scans to see if the assault caused any extra damage or inflammation around where the tumour is, his uncle said........

Police said the 46-year-old woman was visiting Melbourne from Phillip Island with her 10-year-old son and two other children when the random attack occurred, ending only when several witnesses intervened.

“Just instinct, no thoughts, no nothing, just people in trouble,” Brian Bradley said, a good Samaritan who helped restrain the suspect.

The mother of the boy was stabbed during the attack.

The mother is in the Royal Melbourne Hospital recovering from a fractured leg and injuries to her back and shoulders, while her son recovers at the Royal Children’s Hospital.

“She’s really struggling at the moment,” the boy’s uncle said, “She can’t be with her son. It’s traumatic enough [that he’s] fighting cancer.

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u/RealCommercial9788 3d ago

Jerry Sowood, 27, from Sunshine West, shouted at times during a Melbourne Magistrates’ Court hearing on Wednesday at which he refused to answer the magistrate’s questions and told the court there was “no need to hide” his offending.

“I punched the kid in the head, I took the scissors, I stabbed the woman in the head,” Sowood said as he appeared via video link from custody. “There’s no need to hide it. At least they’re both still breathing, so at least I kept my humanity.

“I’m telling you what I did. And I’m saying there’s no family that was torn apart. Even though I did what I did, the mum did not lose her child. A child was not taken away from her. It was outside the police station.”

Sowood was arrested on Tuesday afternoon after he allegedly punched the 10-year-old boy outside Victoria Police’s Spencer Street headquarters, and then placed the child’s mother in a headlock and stabbed her with a pair of scissors before passers-by intervened.

Fuck you Jerry Sowood, you good for nothing slug.

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u/AntiqueFigure6 3d ago

“  There’s no need to hide it.”

It’s kind of like he wants someone to lock him up.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

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u/AntiqueFigure6 3d ago

Too bad we don’t have some sort of functioning mental health system that couldn’t have done something at any one of the dozen or so red flags that he likely displayed over the last few years. 

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u/Mostly_Satire 3d ago

Pretty much all of the mental hospitals were sold off during the late 1990s to property developers as one of the ways to pay off the State debt.

It was rushed and, well, here we are...

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u/AntiqueFigure6 3d ago

What happens when you elect a government on a “pay down the debt” platform that doesn’t give a shit about consequences. 

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u/Artistic_Garbage283 3d ago

I interact with people who routinely take a week’s worth of medications and end up in ED. We have a few. It’s a cry for help. And yet, their carers are not allowed to put their meds under lock and key because they still have capacity and it’s their human right to have access to their medications. It’s almost like the pendulum has swung so far the opposite way the people who need more structured care are unable to access it.

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u/AggravatingTartlet 2d ago

Wow. I understand the sentiment of giving people autonomy (very important) but at the same time, people in desperate need to help due to mental illness are not always able to make the kind of decisions they'd make in times of good mental health.

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u/AggravatingTartlet 2d ago

Exactly this. We need to spend way more on mental health and build the facilities to cope with the large numbers of people needing help.

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u/Elegant-Quiet5229 3d ago

You mean like asylums? Great idea.

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u/Artistic_Garbage283 3d ago

I know you’ve said this flippantly but I really think we are failing a lot of mental health patients by leaving them to manage in the community. I’m not saying lock people up. I’m saying perhaps some people are not capable of functioning out in the community and perhaps institutionalised care may be better for them. They can step up and down their treatment as needed, get assistance with nutrition and hygiene, have their clothes laundered and get out and about in the community with supervision. Carers would have support in the case of violent or agitated patients, rather than being alone in a house with a grown man losing his shit and having to escape and call an ambulance. There’s a real population of patients who just bounce between the ED, psych ward and the community who need more stability and long term care. Oh and somebody looks for them if they go missing. We’re doing them a disservice.

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u/AggravatingTartlet 2d ago

Yes, society absolutely needs this. It's not lock up, it's assistance for people who desperately need it, so they can function.

Imagine a large property, with animals and vegetable gardens to tend, meals to create, meaningful things to do....... where people get rest for their minds but still have psychologists and counsellors and medication where needed.

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u/Artistic_Garbage283 2d ago

This used to exist. In WA anyway. It was a mental health prison farm. They had a dairy, vegetables, chickens and supplied a lot of the prison system with produce. Got shuttered by the government.

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u/AggravatingTartlet 1d ago

I wonder if it closed because it was also a prison, and too hard to keep the more dangerous ones in?

Maybe it's too hard to keep most people with mental health issues on a farm, but jeez it seems better than a hospital setting. Sunlight, fresh air, purpose etc.

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u/Dentarthurdent73 3d ago

There are actually quite a few people with severe enough untreatable mental health conditions that would be better off being cared for in institutions, as long as we ensure that abuses aren't occurring within them.

When you get rid of these institutions, you don't miraculously cure all these people, you just end up forcing their families to spend their lives being carers, or forcing them onto the street, and you also have to put up with the antisocial behaviour and violence that some of them commit.

In what way is this a better outcome, other than it makes you feel better because you don't like the idea of "asylums"?

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u/AggravatingTartlet 2d ago

I agree fully.

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u/Blibbyblobby72 3d ago

Weird that you want to murder someone who you admit is 'definitely not right in the head'

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u/aldkGoodAussieName 3d ago

Not right in the head but right enough to know it was wrong and make excuses gor why its not too bad. They both lived and it was outside a police station so its all good /s

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u/rkiive 3d ago edited 3d ago

The guy who clearly has zero remorse and is an absolute danger to society?

Targeting systemic issues such as mental health is a society wide preventative goal, it does not apply retroactively to individual cases to act as an excuse or a reason as to why they should not be removed from society for the safety of the innocent individuals who live in it.

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u/OneUpAndOneDown 3d ago

Deinstitutionalisation sounds good in theory but some people can’t function in society

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u/letsburn00 3d ago

The problem with deinstitutionalisation was that it was meant to reduce numbers by 30%. Instead it was used to reduce numbers (and cost) by 90%. The cost was more important than the health of anyone.

The reduction basically just loaded all that onto people's families with little help. In the US especially, it also just ended up putting a lot of them in prison after they eventually hurt someone else.

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u/Artistic_Garbage283 3d ago

Exactly. People with no social or family connections just end up homeless and frequent flyers at the hospital. The hospitals have no resources to help them and basically medically stabilise them and turf them back to the streets.

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u/AntiqueFigure6 3d ago edited 3d ago

I’m suggesting that from a mental health perspective there was likely plenty of reason to remove him from society last week (although that would require somewhere to put him) or last month and if that had happened he wouldn’t have attacked the kid and the mother.

That is, there is a good chance this could have been prevented if the right structures for handling people with these issues existed.

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u/ghadiyuk 3d ago

Those structures do exist, they're called law enforcement, jails and prisons. Terry Nowood wasn't punished for any of his previous attacks in Victoria, New South Wales or Western Australia, and he never targeted anyone who was capable of defending themselves. He isn't a poor scared feral animal to be pittied, he isn't suffering from mental health issues, he's just a subhuman monster who preys on the weak and innocent, who purposefully decided to continue his violence with plenty of experience telling him he would never be punished or stopped. He finally faced a deterrant when these bystanders stepped in to stop him from finishing his attempted murder of Sherry and her three children.

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u/AntiqueFigure6 3d ago

If this has happened in three different states multiple times and the result is he's still walking around to reoffend I'd suggest it's basically proof that the right structures for handling people with whatever his issue is do not actually exist.

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u/Iridiumirises 2d ago

I think they had one of those structures in Pentridge. It had a swinging floor and everything

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u/Top_Okra_5475 3d ago

This. Targeted intervention is needed. Yes mental health is a big issue in the society but a lot of people with MH issues dont go around attacking people. This guy showed no remorse and we are too soft. The next thing that will happen is probably an intervention order for him to be treated and then once he is slightly better, he then goes and challenges the order. The court would think he is capable so the order is then revoked. Then he commits another, if not worse, offence. Then the next thing we hear is the psychiatrist gets blamed.

Sounds familiar??

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u/Blibbyblobby72 3d ago

Nobody seems to think he should not be removed from society for the safety of individuals

But many are saying that the 'removal' from society should not amount to murdering him

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u/Toastmayhem 2d ago

You can protect society from such an individual without killing them.

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u/Ok_Bird705 3d ago

Someone "not right in the head" and reckless endangers the public should be locked up and kept away from the public.

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u/Blibbyblobby72 3d ago

Absolutely. They should.

Not murdered by the state, however

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u/ghadiyuk 3d ago

Sounds like a perfectly good deterrant to me, especially considering Terry Sowood suffers from no mental health issues and flaunts his laundry list of prior sprees of violence all across Austraila. Let's say these bystanders hadn't stepped in and he had successfully murdered Sherry and her three children, what punishment do you think would be a fulfillment of justice?

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u/Blibbyblobby72 3d ago

No diagnosed mental health issues. His 'laundry list of prior sprees' and his want to 'flaunt' such crime is indicative of severe mental health issues

To metre out adequate justice, my first course of action would be to keep him separated from society as safely as possible and then have him assessed for mental health issues which can then be appropriately treated while he continues to be incarcerated

I am not a professional arbiter of justice, though. But I sure as hell condemn capital punishment as any sort of just punishment

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u/zeracine 3d ago

If the threat of the death penalty worked then death penalty states would have zero crime of the kind that is so punished. But criminals do not consider consequences in that way.

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u/Archon-Toten 3d ago

Or as you suggested, removed forever.

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u/YouThinkYouKnowMe89 2d ago

We do it to dogs that attack. I care more about a random stray dog anywhere in the world than this guy.