Liang Zhao was randomly, senselessly and fatally bashed on a Braddon street in 2011.
One of his two killers, it has been revealed, committed an armed robbery only five months after being released from prison for the murder.
Just 153 days after tasting freedom and agreeing to be of good behaviour in the community, to be exact.
On Friday, prosecutor Marcus Dyason told the ACT Supreme Court the offender had committed the latest crime in "eerily similar" circumstances to the one that sent him away for more than a decade.
The offender was 17 at the time he murdered Mr Zhao with co-offender Taylor Schmidt.
The Canberra Times has chosen to refer to his role in the Northbourne Avenue murder and therefore cannot name him because he was a child at the time.
Debate over breach punishment
During Friday's sentencing proceedings for the robbery, committed in July 2022, Mr Dyason asked the court to impose the six-and-a-half-year suspended portion of the man's jail sentence he had breached.
"To send a message to offenders that a suspended sentence is a term of imprisonment in the community," Mr Dyason told the ACT Supreme Court.
"If you breach a suspended sentence or the trust placed in you by the judicial system, you will be dealt with swiftly."
The prosecutor said the offender had only completed 6.5 per cent of the murder suspended sentence before he took part in the violent, group robbery of a friend, while possessing a gun.
"The potential for catastrophe as a result of that firearm being there was significant," he said.
Justice Verity McWilliam agreed the breach was not trivial.
"We can't forget what the original sentence was for," she said.
The judge, who found the unnamed man guilty of joint commission aggravated robbery last year, described her impending decision on how to deal with the new offence as "a tricky one".
"What I really want to do is get him off drugs," she said.
Defence lawyer Tim Sharman asked the court to re-sentence his client and impose a term that would include more intensive supervision upon the man's return to the community.
"He was released with inadequate supports. Back to the environment he was living in prior to custody," Mr Sharman said.
The lawyer said things may have been different had the teenager been sentenced with a non-parole period, only available to adults, and the strict community supervision that came with that.
"There's a failing in the system that is perhaps exposed by a case like this," he said.
Other options, including a drug and alcohol treatment order, the judge conceded, were not available for her to consider in sentencing.
The robbery
Justice McWilliam previously found that in July 2022, the man carried a firearm, concealed by a jumper or a jacket, into the home of a woman he was friends with.
Three other robbers entered the home and two started punching the woman while the man sat nearby, the gun now uncovered and lying on his lap.
"When the complainant looked across to the accused for help during the assault, he sat opposite the complainant and looked back at her without any expression," Justice McWilliam found.
"When the complainant was hit to the point where she received a cut above her eye, the accused said, "that's savage".
The group robbery is said to have been over a debt of a few hundred dollars. The victim gave evidence during the trial she owed the robbers after borrowing money to pay for a skip when her father died.
She recounted being repeatedly punched in the face and body, having a handful of hair ripped from her scalp, and one of her front teeth pushed back.
They took her phone and house keys.
On Friday, Mr Dyason told the court: "Without [the offender], the offending in these terms doesn't happen."
The brutal Braddon murder
In 2013, the offender and Schmidt each pleaded guilty to murder charges days before they were set to go to a trial expected to run for eight weeks and involve more than 200 witnesses.
Facts of the historical case include that Mr Zhao had arrived at the Jolimont Centre in Civic about 4am on a bus from Melbourne in August 2011. His dead body would be found about 6.40am that morning.
Arriving in Canberra and unable to find a taxi, the 27-year-old victim began walking along Northbourne Avenue in the hope of meeting his mother along the way after calling her for a lift.
The juvenile and his co-offender had armed themselves with a machete and a baseball bat to commit a robbery that morning.
Walking along the same street, the two killers confronted Mr Zhao before mercilessly and fatally beating the man. They took his mobile phone and $21 in cash.
"Be quiet, shut up, don't tell the cops," the then-child offender told his victim mid-assault to prevent the man from crying out.
A judge previously described the 2011 attack as ''unprovoked, cowardly, brutal, indescribably vicious and ultimately fatal".
"There is [no offence] more serious," Justice Richard Refshauge said when sentencing the juvenile to a 17-year jail sentence, to be suspended after 10 years and six months.
Justice McWilliam has reserved her decision until next week.
