A man has been found guilty of deliberately dousing his neighbour in fuel and setting him on fire at a Mangerton public housing complex last year.
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A jury of 11 women and one man sealed Timothy Illingworth’s fate at Wollongong District Courthouse at 10.15am Tuesday, having retired at 1.10pm Monday.
The decision came after six of nine prosecution witnesses gave evidence that they directly saw Illingworth train a makeshift flamethrower on Joseph Baldacchino, 45, outside Illingworth's Myuna Way unit the night of January 24, 2017.
Illingworth did not give evidence during the five-day trial. The jury was played a recording of a police interview from the early hours of January 25 last year, in which Illingworth claimed he had remained in his ground floor flat all night, oblivious to the man who was engulfed in flames, running up and down the path outside.
He blamed "mistaken identity" and "Chinese whispers" as factors in his wrongful incrimination.
In closing arguments Monday morning, Illingworth's lawyer, Michael Powell, told the court: "he says that he heard some noises, but it was par for the course on Myuna Way - there was always something going on, there was always yelling, always screaming, and he had drawn the curtain and just tried to close it all away".
Illingworth was charged with five offences, including intentionally causing grievous bodily harm. His trial partly turned on whether Mr Baldacchino suffered really serious injury, as opposed to serious injury.
The defence focused on medical evidence showing Mr Baldacchino's burns were of second degree severity; not third, and that he was able to discharge himself from the specialist burns unit at Concord Hospital after five days.
"There's no medical evidence regarding scarring or disfigurement," Mr Powell told jurors. "Mr Baldacchino speaks of scarring. You may have had some difficulty seeing that on the TV monitor and if there was scarring it wasn't immediately obvious - in fact I would go so far as to say it wasn't obvious at all."
Mr Baldacchino has since been jailed over an unrelated matter, and gave evidence via audio-visual link.
He suffered burns to 17.5 percent of his body, including burns to his face and airways, so that he required intubation, noted prosecutor Emiljia Beljic.
"When someone is burnt so badly and such a large area of the skin is damaged [and they require] the skin to be regrown ... it's common sense that he's suffered really serious physical harm," she said.
“If he [Illingworth] just wanted to harm Joe, and not seriously so, he could have kicked him, he could have punched him, he could have thrown [him],” Ms Beljic said. “No, he used flammable liquid, he doused him, then he set alight the stream of liquid. It is clear when you douse someone and set them alight you intend to cause them really serious physical injury.”
Illingworth was also found guilty of assaulting Mr Baldacchino's partner, Laura Kirby, by repeatedly dousing her in fuel during a separate altercation on Christmas Day, 2016 that initially went unreported to police. On that occasion, Illingworth used a tomato sauce bottle to squirt what smelt like petrol onto her and told her to “f*ck off or she'd be set alight”, Ms Kirby told the jury.
The court heard Illingworth used a baby monitor to keep watch on who was coming and going from Myuna Way’s block 13, where he lived with his then-partner Kylie Graham.
With Ms Graham, he urged his dog Conan to chase Mr Baldacchino and Ms Kirby from the block when they came to ask another resident about some stolen property the night of January 24, 2017.
Once outside, Mr Baldacchino confronted Illingworth over the Christmas day dousings and challenged him to a fight.
Ms Graham initially claimed to have seen none of the ensuing violence, but later recounted seeing Illingworth stand over Mr Baldacchino and cover him in accelerant from a tomato sauce bottle, one of several he kept as weapons, she said.
“He squirted the sauce bottle and lit it at the same time … Joe ran screaming down street,” she said, in evidence.
“He was completely in flames. That's when Laura ... tried to put him out and actually caught alight herself. Her hair was caught alight.
“There was a lot of screaming. We rushed inside - Tim and I. I was in shock after that. Tim went inside and started sanding the furniture,” she said, adding she was restoring a piece of furniture at the time.
Ms Graham said Illingworth and a friend then gathered up “anything that could have incriminated” Illingworth – including several sauce bottles – and disposed of or moved them before police arrived.
Illingworth was also found guilty of possessing an unauthorised firearm – a pen gun discovered when police searched his home.
He will return to court for sentencing on July 27.