A MAN accused of going on an hour-long shooting rampage at Wyong in 2020 during which he fired more than 220 rounds, including one that struck and killed 20-year-old Byron Tonks, has raised a defence of mental health impairment.
Bradley Jason Mark White, 42, was angry about a long-running grievance he had with neighbours over the road in Cutler Drive on March 17, 2020, when he twice set fire to a car and then began firing two guns from his verandah and inside his house.
He shot at people in the street, striking one man in the shoulder and a woman in the back, fired upon responding police and pumped bullets into eight cars and a number of houses across the road, next door and behind his property.
At one point during the relentless barrage of bullets, Byron Tonks, who had driven to a house in Cutler Drive to help his younger brother, who was the target of Mr White's rage, screamed out from the front room: "I've been hit".
His family dragged him away and applied towels to a gunshot wound to his chest while starting CPR.
Ultimately, as Mr White continued shooting into the house, police had to remove the three injured people through the backyard. Byron Tonks was treated by paramedics but died at the scene.
Mr White on Tuesday pleaded not guilty to murder, two counts of discharging a firearm with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and four counts of firing a firearm at a house with disregard for safety and faced the first day of a trial in Newcastle Supreme Court.
He does not deny firing the two weapons but has raised a defence of mental health impairment and cognitive impairment, which he says impacted his ability to know what he was doing was wrong.
