The 15-year-old Aboriginal boy was beaten with a metal pole in October 2022. He died 10 days later.
An Australian jury has found two men guilty of murdering Cassius Turvey, a 15-year-old Indigenous boy whose killing prompted nationwide antiracism protests.
Turvey – an Aboriginal schoolboy of the Noongar Nation people of Western Australia – was walking home from school with friends in October 2022 when he was beaten with a metal pole in an unprovoked and vicious attack.
After being placed in an induced coma in a hospital in Perth, he died of his injuries 10 days later.
On Thursday, jurors convicted two men – Jack Brearley, 24, and Brodie Palmer, 29 – of his murder, papers from the Supreme Court of Western Australia showed.
A third man, Mitchell Forth, 27, was found guilty of manslaughter but cleared of murder.
All three men got out of a pick-up truck and chased a group of teenagers that included Turvey, Australian public broadcaster ABC reported.
Brearley assaulted Turvey with a pole from a shopping trolley, the court heard.
Prosecutors said Brearley was angry because someone had smashed his car windows – though there was no suggestion Turvey was responsible, ABC said.
Some witnesses said the attackers had used racial slurs before the attack, but racism was not an alleged motive in the court proceedings.
After the verdicts, Cassius’s mother Mechelle Turvey walked from the court and yelled emphatically “Justice!”, ABC reported.
In the days after the teenager’s killing, thousands of protesters held rallies and vigils around Australia.
At the time, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the attack was racially motivated, describing it as a “terrible tragedy”.
The murder was the most recent in a number of attacks on Indigenous children and young people that have shocked Australia.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people face stark inequalities compared with other Australians, with shorter life expectancies, poorer health and education and higher imprisonment rates.
A fourth person charged over Turvey’s killing, Aleesha Gilmore, was cleared of both murder and manslaughter charges, court documents showed.
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