Machete mayhem: neighbour dispute ends in slashing

The court heard Arnold and two other people got into a verbal dispute with two people in the house next door over a missing dog on August 20 last year, with Arnold going to the neighbour’s house to look for it after he said he heard it bark.

The prosecutor said the neighbour told them to leave, with Arnold telling him to come outside the fence and he would “belt him”.

A co-accused man and a woman arrived in a car and a verbal argument started.

Arnold then went back into his house and grabbed a machete and a steak knife, holding them behind his back when he brought them outside.

As the confrontation escalated, the man allegedly drove the car at the two neighbours, hitting one of them and causing the other to run out of the way, the prosecutor said.

As the victim ran on to Arnold’s property to escape the car, Arnold swung the machete, slashing the man’s arm, with the cut going down to the bone and slashing tendons on the way.

The prosecutor told the court the victim had “thought he was going to die” and now had limited use of his hand since the attack.

Arnold’s defence solicitor told that court his client’s upbringing had been “defined by turmoil” and that he had left school at an early age because of violence there.

A psychologist report said an incident when he was at school “had an ongoing effect on him whenever he feels threatened”.

The defence argued that the use of the machete was a “spontaneous act that resulted after the victim ran on to his property” to avoid being hit.

He also said Arnold was 24 years old at the time of the incident, and had “reduced his cannabis use significantly” since then.

He also said Arnold no longer lived at the house where the incident occurred, instead living with his partner and children in another Seymour house.

He asked the magistrate for his client to be sentenced to a community corrections order.

However, the prosecutor argued for a jail sentence, to be combined with a community corrections order.

“He accepted he caused the injury, but says he responded to confrontation,” the prosecutor said.

“He went back into the house, retrieved a weapon, chased someone and slashed them.”

The prosecutor also urged magistrate Peter Mitchen to take notice that in Victoria a response had been seen to be needed in response to blade-based confrontations” with the introductions of machete bins.

“A man was slashed to the arm in such a way with a weapon that it went to the bone,” he said.

In sentencing Arnold, Mr Mithen said the ramifications of his actions had caused the victim to lose the use of his right arm.

“The community is calling out for the courts to protect the community given the use of a machete,” he said.

He sentenced Arnold to eight months in prison, to be followed by an 18-month community corrections order.

However, Arnold’s defence solicitor lodged an appeal of the sentence almost immediately after it has handed down, and he was released on bail until the appeal can be heard in the County Court.

Bail conditions include that he live at his house in Seymour, and not leave Victoria.