Woman tells of trauma after violent attack by three girls at Cairns shopping centre

In short:

A woman left with a spinal injury after a violent attack by three girls at a Cairns shopping centre says she is now traumatised and unable to work.

The girls, aged 13, 15 and 17 at the time, each pleaded guilty in the Childrens Court to armed robbery in company with wounding and unlawfully using a motor vehicle.

What’s next?

The eldest offender was sentenced to nine months’ detention, while the younger girls agreed to take part in a restorative justice process.

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A woman has told a court that a violent attack and car theft by three teenage girls at a Queensland shopping centre has left her traumatised and living in fear, with devastating injuries.

Warning: This story contains graphic details of assault that may distress some readers.

The 40-year-old woman shared her victim impact statement in Cairns Childrens Court on Friday, as her three young attackers were sentenced.

On the evening of November 5 last year, she was walking to her car at a shopping centre in the Cairns suburb of Edmonton when she was confronted by the girls — aged 13, 15 and 17 at the time.

The court was shown CCTV footage of the teens approaching her at about 8:30pm and kicking, punching and stabbing her in the arm, before dragging her to the ground by her hair.

The woman struck her head during the attack, leaving her temporarily paralysed and suffering a spinal injury.

After stealing her keys and getting into her car, one of the attackers jumped out to move her legs so they would not be run over as they fled.

“I will never be the person I was both physically and mentally before the attack,” the woman told the court.

“Lying on the ground paralysed, I thought, ‘Will these girls just drive over my head and this is the end, I’m about to die?'” she said.

“Although the physical scars remain from this assault, this incident has greatly affected me in many ways.”

The woman said she had become a recluse, had changed the locks on her home due to fear, relied on family for support, and was left unable to work.

Her injuries included a haematoma or brain bleeding, a stab wound, a broken spine requiring a metal cage, and widespread bruising and abrasions.

The metal cage for her spine later collapsed, forcing the woman to undergo a second spinal surgery.

“After the attack, I have, and currently have to, take medication for pain relief and will be required to do so in the future,” she said.

The court heard she had been studying to work with children and young people before the incident, but her recovery had been long and difficult.

The juveniles were each charged with one count of armed robbery in company with wounding and one charge of unlawfully using a motor vehicle, to which each pleaded guilty.

No convictions for offenders

In sentencing the eldest offender, Judge Dean Morzone KC acknowledged the girl’s difficult upbringing.

He said the young woman, now 18, “lived with domestic violence” and had “witnessed many incidents of violence, emotional and physical”.

The court heard she had a sibling removed by Child Safety, was placed in and out of care in 2019, and later returned to her family.

She had also experienced the death of a close friend and was required to give evidence at the coronial inquest.

“Of course that growing up, affects you,” Judge Morzone said.

“Probably in the past, you’ve been hurt. But that doesn’t mean now you’ve grown up … someone else has to pay for that.

“It’s time for you to take responsibility.”

Judge Morzone also took into account her previous offending, which included assaulting police.

The two younger girls agreed to take part in a restorative justice process with no convictions recorded if successfully completed.

The eldest refused restorative justice, and was sentenced to nine months’ detention, with 50 per cent to be served, and no conviction recorded.

A chance for rehabilitation

Despite the trauma, the victim told the court she hoped the teenagers could turn their lives around and she agreed to meet with the offenders as part of a restorative justice process.

Restorative justice involves a supported process so victims or survivors can have a difficult conversation with those responsible.

“I would like to see change … for the youth of our community,” she said.

“I can only hope that the girls that attacked me are able to have a chance and opportunity to rehabilitate.”

Miami face-chewing victim: attacker Rudy Eugene ‘ripped me to ribbons’

This article is more than 13 years old

Ronald Poppo, who lost most of his facial features in the attack, details in police tapes how ‘vicious’ Eugene ‘just went berserk’

Richard Luscombe in Miami

A homeless man whose face was chewed off in an attack on a Miami causeway has described how his assailant “just ripped me to ribbons” before police shot him dead.

Ronald Poppo, who lost an eye and most of his facial features in the May attack, told detectives that he believed Rudy Eugene had “a bad day on the beach,” causing him to launch the brutal assault.

“He attacked me. He just ripped me to ribbons. He chewed up my face,” Poppo, 65, told Detective Frank Sanchez of Miami police in his first interview last month, the transcript of which has just been released.

“He mashed my face into the sidewalk. My face is all bent and bashed up. My eyes … my eyes got plucked out. He was strangling me in wrestling holds, at the same time he was picking my eyes out.”

Poppo was unable to offer any reason why Eugene, a 31-year-old Miami native of Haitian descent, had singled him out, but said his attacker was “in kind of a glad mood for a while” before suddenly turning on him.

“For a very short amount of time, I thought he was a good guy,” he said. “But he just went and turned berserk. He apparently didn’t have a good day at the beach and I guess he took it out on me or something. I don’t know.

“He turned quite vicious after a minute or two, and he started to rip me apart. He just started to scream. And he was talking kind of funny talk for a while, too. That I was gonna die. And he was gonna die. He must have been souped up on something.

“What could provoke an attack of that type? I didn’t curse at the guy or say anything mean or nasty.”

The early-afternoon attack, which was captured on video by security cameras overlooking Miami’s MacArthur Causeway, ended only when police officer Jose Ramirez fired five shots at Eugene, who was naked having discarded all of his clothes as he walked from his car that he abandoned nearby.

At the time, police and doctors speculated that Eugene was probably under the influence of a mind-altering drug, with bath salts — a synthetic substance with effects similar to LSD — the chief suspect.

But toxicology tests on Eugene’s body revealed only evidence of recent marijuana use and, contrary to reports that he had ripped strips from Poppo’s face with his teeth and swallowed them, no human skin was found in his stomach.

Larry Vega, a passing cyclist who witnessed the attack, likened the encounter to a scene from a zombie film. “The guy was like tearing him to pieces with his mouth, so I told him: ‘Get off!'” Vega told a Miami TV station.

“He just kept eating the other guy away, like ripping his skin. The police officer told him several times to get off and the guy just stood his head up like that with a piece of flesh in his mouth and growled. The guy, he was like a zombie, blood dripping. It was intense.”

Doctors say Poppo has maintained a positive attitude and had recovered well from the attack, in which he lost his left eye, probably the sight in his right and most of the rest of his face. But he will need to stay in a rehabilitation facility for the foreseeable future and faces the likelihood of months of reconstructive surgery.

In the police interview he remains calm, thanking Miami police for saving his life and giving a mostly coherent account of his memory of the attack, although some of his assertions — such as Eugene hitchhiking from Miami Beach to the mainland — remain at odds with what investigators believe.

Poppo also recalled Eugene wearing a green shirt and shorts, even though he was naked during the attack. He told police how he heard a car dropping Eugene off and said they then spent several minutes chatting. “He said he didn’t like the beach for something. He said he wasn’t scoring there. He is in kind of a flustered mode about it, I think.”