3yo grazed by bullet in drive-by shooting

A three-year-old boy has been grazed by a bullet during a drive-by shooting at Blacktown in Sydney's west.

Witnesses have told police they saw three men in a car open fire on a house on Vardys Road shortly after midnight.

The toddler was treated by ambulance officers at the scene.

Another boy, a man and a woman were uninjured.

Shooter jailed over mobile phone fight

The Supreme Court has sentenced an Adelaide man to eight years in jail for deliberately shooting a teenager in an argument about a mobile phone.

Cong Thanh Nguyen, 23, of Paralowie, shot a drug associate in the abdomen in a daylight attack at Prospect last year.

A jury convicted Nguyen of intentionally causing serious harm but found him not guilty of a more serious charge of attempted murder.

Justice Kevin Duggan said the motive for the attack with a double-barrelled shotgun seemed to be that the victim had accused Nguyen of stealing his mobile phone.

Justice Duggan said it was a brazen act in a public place in front of witnesses.

Nguyen was given a five-year non-parole term.

Bushland remains are of double murderer

THE hunt for one of the state's most wanted men is over, with the discovery of the double-murderer Stanley Maguire's corpse in bushland north of Sydney.

The skeletal remains of the 59-year-old were found on Tuesday evening by a bushwalker about 40 metres from the Old Pacific Highway.

A preliminary examination suggested Maguire may have killed himself with a shotgun, possibly the one he used to kill a Wollongong miner, Stephen Holmes in November.

Some articles were recovered near the corpse.

Maguire has been on the state's most wanted list since he killed the 41-year-old father of four with a shotgun after an argument.

Mr Holmes's widow, Angela, said her husband had gone across the road to confront Maguire about the "insanities" he was repeating "over and over".

"My husband had had enough," she said last year. "He asked him to be quiet. And he pulled a gun and killed him."

Maguire's red Nissan Pulsar hatchback was discovered a day later, abandoned on the side of a road near Mount White north of Sydney. Police scoured the area but failed to find him.

It quickly emerged that Mr Holmes was the second man Maguire had killed. In 1993 Maguire ran over and shot another miner, John Vickers, in the car park of a Central Coast RSL.

Maguire was found guilty of manslaughter and spent seven years in jail before being released in 2002. He moved to Woonona but fled after he shot Mr Holmes.

Yesterday the mother of Mr Holmes, Yvonne, said the discovery meant they wouldn't have to "face him in court". "We won't have to relive it all."

Four jailed over baby, mum shooting

Four people responsible for a home invasion during which a 12-month-old boy and his mother were peppered with gunshot pellets have been jailed.

Ann-Marie Dulcie Lugg, 25, Christopher Gordon Lincoln, 36, and Michael Shawn Sweeney, 38, were Wednesday jailed in Brisbane District Court for their part in the May 2007 incident at Stafford, in Brisbane's north.

Lugg and Sweeney were sentenced to seven years and seven-and-a-half years jail respectively, while Lincoln was handed a five-year sentence.

The fourth offender Nicole Louise Rose, 28, was earlier sentenced to four years jail, suspended after 12 months.

The court earlier heard the group, including Sweeney who was armed with a shotgun, forced their way into the 41-year-old woman's home at 6am on May 19 last year.

She was held captive in her room, still holding her 12-month-old baby while Rose kept an eye on her 12-year-old daughter in the living room.

Prosecutor Vicki Loury said Lincoln and Sweeney searched the bedroom for valuables, upending a mattress and displacing other objects in the process.

She said Sweeney also asked the woman, a known drug dealer, "Where are the ounces?" and slapped her when she tried to hide several mobile phones from him.

At some point, Sweeney handed Lugg the shotgun but she was nervous and shaking as she held it, the court was told.

The court heard Lugg attempted to cover the weapon with a towel to prevent the baby from seeing it but accidentally discharged the weapon.

The baby had pellet wounds to his left arm, leg and foot while his mother was wounded in her forearm, abdomen, thighs and knees.

Both underwent surgery to have the pellets removed but doctors were unable to remove some from the woman.

Sweeney also suffered several pellet wounds.

Judge Terry Martin ordered Lincoln's sentence be suspended after two years, including time he has already served.

Lugg will be eligible for parole in January 2010 while Sweeney will be eligible for release in August 2010.

Bikie jailed for six years over shooting

A Gold Coast bikie has been jailed for six-and-a-half years after shooting a rival gang member in the face, sparking a melee at a kickboxing match that caused $40,000 damage.

Shane Scott Bowden, 36 of Surfers Paradise, was this morning declared a serious violent offender by a District Court judge who described Bowden's decision to open fire in the crowd of 1800 at Carrara's Royal Pines Resort on March 18, 2006, as an act of "utter lawlessness".

Bowden, a member of the Finks motorcycle club, gunned down gang defector-turned Melbourne CBD killer Christopher Wayne Hudson, 30, after a fight broke out about 10.30pm.

The court heard Bowden had been accompanying fellow Fink, Nicholas John Forbes, 39, who attacked Hudson over claims he tried to steal a precious stone from Forbes' elderly parents to feed a drug habit.

The punch-up sparked a near riot in the resort's Grand Ballroom, where a kickboxing tournament was being televised.

Camera footage of the melee shows chairs and glasses being thrown and tables being up-ended as Finks and members of the rival Hells Angels gang clashed inside the venue.

Three people were shot and two stabbed in the incident, later dubbed the "Ballroom Blitz".

After being punched and having a chair smashed over his head by Forbes, Hudson was then shot twice by Bowden at close range, the bullets piercing his jaw and grazing his back.

He refused to give a statement to police and later went on the run to Victoria, where he murdered solicitor Brendan Keilar and shot Dutch backpacker Paul de Waard and dancer Kaera Douglas during a domestic dispute in a city street in June last year.

In sentencing Forbes and Bowden today, Judge Milton Griffin SC accepted Forbes' reasons for confronting Hudson at the kickboxing match were "real" and that the resulting melee was neither man's fault.

However, he said the degree of violence shown by the pair was "extreme".

"To use a weapon in the circumstances that you did - a gun that was fired in a public place - ...is utterly lawless behaviour," He told Bowden, who pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding with intent to maim and discharging a firearm in public.

"You committed these offences while on parole."

Forbes was sentenced to 18 months, suspended after nine, after pleading guilty to assault occasioning bodily harm while armed and in company over the attack on Hudson.

He received a further 18 months for a "rampage of violence" committed in January this year in a Broadbeach nightclub and shopping mall in which he assaulted seven people, fracturing one man's eye socket.

She took a gun to kill, but jury set her free

Catherine Smith leaves court.

AS CATHERINE SMITH emerged from the darkness, she pulled back the slide on the black semi-automatic pistol, her finger firmly on the trigger.

"I'll kill you, you bastard," she allegedly said, pointing it at her former husband, Kevin Smith.

Ms Smith, 58, said it had taken 30 years of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the man she once loved to reach breaking point. That moment came on the evening of June 14, 2006, when the mother of six was charged with shooting her former husband outside a boarding house in Manly with the intent to murder him. Two shots were fired, but nobody was hurt.

It took just 25 minutes for the District Court jury to find her not guilty of attempted murder and that she had acted in self defence.

Outside court a jubilant Ms Smith said she was pleased about the verdict. Her lawyers called it a victory for battered wives.

Ms Smith, who the court was told had been diagnosed with chronic post traumatic stress disorder as a result of the years of abuse, had earlier pleaded guilty to possessing an unlicensed firearm. However Judge Greg Hosking chose to impose no sentence or conviction against her.

Much of what Ms Smith told the court she endured over her 30-year marriage is unfit to print.

The court heard Mr Smith had threatened her at various times with guns, a skinning knife, a fire poker and tortured her with an electric cattle prod. He held guns to her throat and between her eyes and shot at her on several occasions as she ran for her life. One evening she ran more than 25 kilometres along railway tracks to escape.

As Mr Smith strode confidently into the courtroom to give his evidence Ms Smith sat with her head down. She could not look at him and her body trembled.

His mantra throughout the marriage had been "If you leave me, bitch, I'll hunt you down and kill you", the court had heard.

She said she feared he would do just that if she did not get to him first.

Despite countless complaints, statement and letters Ms Smith and her family gave to police, Mr Smith has not been charged for any offences relating to abuse. Mr Smith had repeatedly denied the allegations of abuse put to him throughout the trial, describing them as "ridiculous". He told the jury: "I do not have a violent bone in my body." He agreed to give evidence only after being offered immunity from prosecution for anything he might say. That did not include immunity from perjury.

Judge Hosking ordered that transcripts from the trial be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions to determine whether any serious indictable offences may have arisen from any of the evidence given.

Defence counsel Mark Dennis described Mr Smith as a "master manipulator", "a psychopath" and a man who was "capable of extreme violence and was prepared to take a life if the whim took him". In 2000 he was jailed for holding one of his sons and his partner for 27 hours until they revealed Ms Smith's whereabouts.

Outside court Ms Smith told reporters she thought they would still "be preyed on" by her former husband. "I just want him gone from our lives," she said.

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