‘I f--king warned you’: Man’s chilling words before ‘savage, cowardly’ murder attempt on veteran in backyard shed

A court has been told of the chilling statement a man made as he attempted to murder his war veteran neighbour during a “savage and cowardly” attack sparked over petty disputes about yard cuttings and a sensor light. The victim choked up at Brisbane Supreme Court on Tuesday as he described how he began to see “darkness” and feared he would die after Shaun Michael White set upon him with a 30cm knife in the backyard of his Caloundra West home in 2022. White’s attack was completely unprovoked and followed intimidatory and harassing behaviour towards the family — who had two children — over a dispute about a sensor light on their property. White, 45, was due to be sentenced in April last year after pleading guilty to attempted murder, but chaotic scenes erupted in court after he claimed there were “lies” in the case. He accused his original lawyer of not doing his job before self-harming in the dock during an adjournment. White’s legal team then withdrew from the case. On Tuesday, he sat silently and stared blankly, sipping water and occasionally rolling his eyes and muttering under his breath as crown prosecutor Melissa Wilson detailed the horrific lead-up to the event. The court was told the family moved into the home in Caloundra West in 2019 and almost “immediately” experienced problems with White, who verbally abused, threatened and intimidated them. White complained a sensor light on their property shone into his house and caused him headaches. Several days before the incident, White made a post on Facebook where he mused: “It’s not wrong to kill a bogan, right? Kind of like killing a parasitic bug that gives nothing but takes everything.” On April 13, 2022, White began verbally abusing the man’s wife as she arrived home over “cuttings” left on his property. When the man arrived home he adjusted the sensor light, noticing the fence between his property and White’s was “shaking very hard”. Ms Wilson said the man was then confronted by White in his shed, armed with a 30cm-long knife. “(White) advanced on the complainant quickly and in a threatening manner, he said: ‘I f--king warned you’,” Ms Wilson said. The pair ended up on the ground where White stabbed the man in the neck and twice in his back. “The complainant’s breathing was laboured, he felt air coming from the wound in his back,” Ms Wilson continued. “He felt like he was going to die. He said he started to see darkness. “It was a savage, cowardly and unprovoked attack on the complainant. He was defenceless.” White, covered in blood, fled the scene in his ute. ‘I truly believed I was about to die’ The court was told the man was rushed to hospital and placed in a medically induced coma. Doctors suggested he would have died as a result of the injuries to his neck and back, the latter of which penetrated his lung, without medical treatment. Addressing the court, the man said White’s attack had left him with permanent scars, both physical and invisible. “Before this attack, I had served my country as a war veteran,” he said in his victim impact statement. “Nothing in my military service, nothing I had seen or endured would prepare me for an attack in my own home, in front of my family.” The man said he would “never forget” the moments after the attack as he lay bleeding on the floor of his shed. “Paramedics and police worked desperately to keep me alive,” he said. “I could feel my vision darken and the world close in around me. “I truly believed I was about to die. “In that moment, I thought of my family and how they might grow up without their father or husband.” The man told the court he experienced post-traumatic stress disorder and experienced “nightmares and flashbacks” of the event. He said he used to be “someone who enjoyed being around people” but now struggled and felt “uneasy and hypervigilant” in social situations. In her own statement, the man’s wife revealed their marriage had broken down as a result of the trauma of the attack. “I will never forget the scream I heard from my husband that day and the image of Shaun White on the back of my husband, with a knife in his neck,” she said. The woman said she feared White’s inevitable release from custody as he knew where they lived and where their children attended school. “He has shown no remorse for his behaviour and I believe he is the kind of person who will come for us once he is released,” the woman said. White ‘sorry’, remorseful for injuries White had penned a letter to the court where he said he was “sorry” for what he had done and accepted he had caused the injuries. Two character references were also tendered from his mother and father who were in the public gallery. The court was told a forensic psychologist determined White’s mental state had deteriorated since his incarceration and there was evidence to “support the provisional diagnostic formulation of a persistent disorder”. White also suffered from Graves’ disease, an autoimmune disease leading to an overactive thyroid, for which he had not been medicated for since 2018. “You told (the psychologist) of your pervasive pattern of emotional and behavioural disregulation when confronted with problems in interpersonal relationships,” Justice Glenn Martin said. White’s response on the day was “manifestly excessive” and reflected “impairments in self-regulation” and his “capacity to understand the consequences of the actions” was likely to have been affected on the day. Barrister Daniel Boddice said his client was remorseful and struggled to find employment as a journalist after leaving university. At the time, he was doing garden and maintenance work. Justice Martin sentenced White to 11 years’ jail, declaring his time served in pre-sentence custody since April 2022 as time served. White’s offence was also declared a serious violent offence - meaning he will need to serve 80 per cent of his sentence before being eligible to apply for parole. news.com.au mental health helplines