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Award for sea rescue A VICTORIAN man was honoured in the Australian Bravery Awards this week for saving a man trapped in a capsized fishing vessel at Point Nepean. Byron Marshall was awarded a bravery medal for his role in the December 2010 rescue. When the alarm was raised that a vessel had overturned in rough water, Mr Marshall and two colleagues boarded a boat in Queenscliff harbour and made their way towards the upturned boat. After establishing that 10 of the 12 people on the charter boat had been rescued, Mr Marshall jumped into the water and swam about 100 metres towards the vessel to search for the remaining two passengers. After reaching the fishing boat, Mr Marshall tried to untangle a deceased man floating face down with lines wrapped around his legs. Realising the conditions were worsening, and in danger of being entangled himself, he shouted into the vessel to check if the remaining passenger was nearby. A man trapped inside responded
Brave effort: Byron Marshall has received an award for a rescue at Point Nepean. Picture: Darren Apps/The Age
and Mr Marshall assisted him to an opening on the vessel’s bridge. Mr Marshall pulled the man free of the boat and a rescue helicopter winched him to safety.
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Murderer gets 181⁄2 years A MORNINGTON Peninsula man who hacked a woman to death with a Gurkha knife last year has been sentenced to 181⁄2 years in jail for the ‘‘foul and horrible murder’’. Social misfit and drug user Justin Patrick Hill attacked 30-year-old Erin Burriss in June last year after she went to his Dromana home and started verbally abusing Hill and his parents. The two were friends, but had argued at Ms Burriss’ unit after she accused Hill of not washing the dishes properly. Hill then went home, Ms Burriss followed him and bashed on his front door with a log splitter, before Hill charged out of the house with the knife. ‘‘The exceptional violence of the attack, especially in circumstances where there was no genuine threat from Erin which could have warranted such a response, is inexplicable,’’ Supreme Court judge Ross Robson said, before sentencing Hill last week to a minimum of 15 years’ jail. ‘‘It is in fact difficult to contemplate
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any threat that would warrant the kind of injuries you inflicted on Erin,’’ Judge Robson said. Ms Burriss’ mother, Kerry, said in a victim impact statement that her daughter’s murder had a lasting and traumatic effect on her family. ‘‘No mother should ever have to experience the loss of a child, especially due to a crime. I am angry that I will never see Erin again. I still can’t believe that something so tragic happened to my girl,’’ she stated. During the trial, the jury heard that Hill, 36, slashed Ms Burriss up to 10 times in the head, face and arms after she arrived at his house at 12.45am on June 9. After attacking Ms Burriss, Hill said to his parents; ‘‘there, problem solved’’ before putting his bloodstained clothes in the laundry and sitting at a computer with a cup of coffee to play a game. Ms Burriss and Hill had had a volatile relationship, characterised by drug abuse, paranoia on Hill’s part and deepening tension. Hill’s lawyer, Mar-
cus Dempsey, argued in mitigation that he was also fearful that he and his family were going to be attacked by another acquaintance, Jason Webb. A log splitter was found near Ms Burriss’ body, but the prosecution had said there was no evidence she had threatened Hill with it, and Hill had no injuries suggesting he had been attacked. Hill was a long-time cannabis user, a former heroin user and abused prescription medication that had originally been prescribed for Ms Burriss, Mr Dempsey said. The Age revealed earlier this month that Hill’s brother, Mark James Hill, was convicted of beating his exgirlfriend’s new boyfriend to death in a jealous rage in 2004 at a Somerville property, and was sentenced to a maximum of 17 years in prison. Mark Hill was 29 when he bashed 22-year-old physiotherapist Adrian Scholes so badly a forensic pathologist at the trial said Mr Scholes’ skull was like a ‘‘broken Easter egg’’. — Dan Oakes/The Age
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