Screams were heard in court from the family and friends of a young man who was found guilty of murdering a bottle shop worker, whilst the slain man’s mother and sister cried and embraced.
Keith Kerinauia, 19, was found guilty of murdering Airport Tavern BWS bottle shop employee, Declan Laverty, 20, after an eight-day trial in the Northern Territory Supreme Court.
Mr Laverty was minutes away from finishing his shift at the drive-through bottle shop in the Darwin suburb of Jingili, just before 9pm on March, 19, 2023, when he was stabbed multiple times.
Kerinauia attacked Mr Laverty after he was refused service and fled the scene in a blue 2014 Toyota Camry.
Twenty witnesses gave evidence during the trial – including police, forensic experts, eyewitnesses and Kerinauia, reported ABC News.
Declan Laverty, 20, was stabbed and killed just before 9pm on March, 19, 2023 in Darwin’s northern suburb of Jingili
Keith Kerinauia, 19, was found guilty in Darwin’s Supreme Court on Thursday of murdering 20-year-old bottle shop worker, Declan Laverty (pictured, the drive-through BWS bottle shop where Mr Laverty was stabbed to death only minutes before his shift was due to end)
Multiple CCTV clips showing the stabbing unfolding were played to the court.
The 10-day trial was told the two men got into a verbal altercation before Kerinauia left the bottle shop in Darwin’s northern suburbs and returned with a knife.
In CCTV footage shown to the court, Mr Laverty can be seen lunging at Kerinauia with a knife, which his mother had told him to ‘carry for protection’.
Kerinauia then fatally stabbed Mr Laverty in the chest.
He died in the back room at his work shortly after 9pm, texting his mother one last time: ‘I love you, being stabbed’.
During the second day of the murder trial on Tuesday, security guard Rifat Mahmud told the Supreme Court in Darwin he saw Mr Laverty being stabbed.
Mr Mahmud told the jury he yelled at the worker to ‘get back in here’ as he held open the shop’s staffroom door.
The security guard desperately tried to save Mr Laverty who he said was laying next to the toilet and ‘bleeding badly’.
‘He put his hand to me and said ‘Rifat, save me’,’ Mr Mahmud told the court in a report by NT News.
‘His eyes were getting bigger, he was bleeding from his mouth. He was suffocating, he couldn’t breathe.’
BWS Airport Tavern security guard Rifat Mahmud (centre) tried desperately to save Ms Laverty and revealed the worker’s final words to the Supreme Court in Darwin
The jury, who were sent to deliberate on Wednesday afternoon, returned their unanimous verdict just before 11am on Thursday in front of a gallery full of supporters for both the victim and the accused.
Mr Laverty’s mother Samara broke into tears before being consoled by her sister-in-law and daughter.
The heartbreak of Kerinauia’s family was palpable before their distress caused security to lock down the Supreme Court.
One family member drove erratically across the Darwin courthouse’s lawns, while another yelled ‘you racist mother****ers’.
The same woman said the courts had locked up a ‘gentle giant’ and there was ‘no justice for him or Kumanjayi Walker’, referring to the Indigenous teenager fatally shot by an NT Police officer in November 2019 during an attempted arrest.
Samara Laverty (centre) said the family has justice and was glad the jury could see that her son died an agonising death. Declan sent her a text in his final moments that said: ‘I love you, being stabbed’
However, Ms Laverty said her family had received justice.
‘He was just a 20-year-old kid at work and for that he died. So now we’ve got justice,’ Samara Laverty told reporters.
‘The brutality of what he went through that night. The size of the fatal wound … I needed to know that he didn’t suffer.
‘But listening to that last triple-zero call not only did he suffer, but he died an agonising death. And I’m so glad the jury could see that.’
In the Northern Territory a murder verdict carries a minimum non-parole period of 20 years in prison.
Kerinauia’s defence lawyer Jon Tippett indicated he would be making a submission for the minimum non-parole period for his client when they returned to court for sentencing submissions in coming weeks.
