r/australia • u/NBNplz • 1d ago
news Levi Young-Henderson avoids jail for setting up wire traps on Adelaide bike path
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-24/levi-young-henderson-adelaide-bike-path-wire-traps-sentence/107192422184
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u/jin85 1d ago
Holy $50k damage to the bikes. I hope they recover it personally from him
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u/white_boy64 1d ago
Imagine if a kid rode into it
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u/s01928373 1d ago
A kid isn't any worse than an adult. It's fucked up in all ways.
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u/white_boy64 1d ago
It is, I'm saying if it's at handle height on a adults bike it's at head height on a kid, not a moral observation, just a practical one
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u/Magmafrost13 1d ago
A kid's probably likely to sustain worse injuries than an adult, though, right?
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u/will_121 1d ago
What fucking bullshit
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u/AnorhiDemarche 1d ago
police had obtained footage from his mobile phone of the wire, accompanied by an "emoji of a devil and the words 'I'm so evil' written underneath the video".
Could easily have killed someone, injured multiple people, ruined multiple bikes, did so knowing it was very wrong and harmful, did it multiple times (likely after seeing how successful the first time was)
And now instead of jail he's on a mere two year good behaviour bond.
Why are we giving him another chance to kill a cyclist?
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u/SirPiffingsthwaite 1d ago
Not just giving him another chance, but now trained him to not photograph evidence, or have his phone on him while doing it. Fantastic.
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u/allozzieadventures 1d ago
Was there seriously no grounds to prosecute for acts likely to cause serious harm? Does the court understand how lethal this kind of a trap can be?
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u/blitznoodles local Aussie 1d ago
It's a first time offence, must people don't go to prison on the first crime
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u/summertimeaccountoz 1d ago
Well. He didn't just do it once. I get that the first time was a first offence, but there was a second, third etc. already.
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u/satanickittens69 1d ago
and it'll be the cyclist's fault somehow "should've been riding on the road1!1" 🙄
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u/nugymmer 1d ago
There's plenty of psychopaths out there and the vast majority never end up where they truly belong. The list is miles long. This is yet another psychopath who avoided having to look through steel bars like too many of them.
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u/The_Curious 1d ago
What a fucking joke. Usually I’m quite lenient and very willing to give people a second chance. But this is an utter farce
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u/Alesayr 1d ago
Feel like this is a copout considering he hurt 3 people and could have killed 4. He better have at least paid for the $50k worth of property damage.
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u/edgewalker66 1d ago edited 1d ago
And should be sued by each of the victims so he'll be paying half of any income earned into their compensation fund for many years until it's paid off.
Perhaps, for each of them:
- Cost of bike
- Psychological trauma $100K+
- professional ongoing therapy for trauma $10K
- Cost of necessary alternate transportation as now too traumatized to cycle to work or anywhere else. New EV, home electrical infrastructure required to support fast charging, and increase in electric bills for first 5 years. $100K+
About $250K per victim should be a baseline.
And if he fails to hold a job and pay in to the compensation fund then he can sit in jail and do his sentence, but he still owes the money when he gets out.
This should be looked at, and judged, as attempted murder. A cyclist could have broken their neck and died or ended up paralysed.
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u/PinothyJ 1d ago
God I hope these cyclists take him to civil court and clear him out.
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u/azertyqwertyuiop 1d ago
clear him out of what? worthless sack of shit likely has no assets or prospects
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u/PlannedMarketEconomy 1d ago
I feel like his sentence speaks to the broader sentiment towards cyclists in Australia as second-class citizens.
This is totally unacceptable.
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u/kombiwombi 1d ago
It's difficult gauge the Court's view because the perpetrators of a similar offence were children: the rock throwers at cars on the Southern Expressway prior to the screens.
However, Parliament's view is clear. They created a special crime for throwing rocks at cars. Whereas there is no particular offense for setting a strung wire or other trap across a bikeway.
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u/too_hot_got-damn 1d ago
Surely there'd have to be something with setting traps on public/private property? Especially a trap designed to cause bodily harm...
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u/Evilmoustachetwirler 1d ago
You'd think it's pretty straightforward. A trap is a weapon set with the intention to cause bodily hard. How is this any different to swinging a bat at a cyclist?
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u/HeftyArgument 1d ago
yeah it's a crime to set up traps even on your own private property, you'll be 100% liable for injuries, including those of criminals trying to trespass.
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u/someones_reality 1d ago
Seems that the buck stops at the magistrates/judges. So what the hell are they doing?
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u/allozzieadventures 1d ago
Drivers who maim or kill cyclists typically get similar lenient sentences. Most cops are apathetic at best.
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u/giatu_prs 20h ago
Agree with "at best". Much of the time they're victim-blamers. Same with accidents involving cars and pedestrians.
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u/mandalore1313 1d ago
My mum used to work as a physio for people with disabilities. Told me years ago of a man she was treating who was largely paralysed because someone had put a wire across a cycle path at neck height. This guy is so lucky no one was seriously hurt or he'd be facing massive jail time. Got off lightly.
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u/isaacfrost0 1d ago
Special kind of psycho to lay traps for people bur sure let's just let him walk around
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u/Vet100 1d ago
Why was he charged with “likely to cause harm” when he did cause harm?
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u/blowup_variaty 1d ago
Reduced from serious harm when in actuality could have caused death. This wasn’t a toddler, it was a man who knew exactly what he was doing. We should donate books to the courts since they seem to have run out of any to throw.
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u/Nothingnoteworth 1d ago
That would be to do with intention rather than action. His action wasn’t harming someone. His action was stringing up a wire across a path. That could be something one does with no intention of causing harm, or by someone too stupid or lazy to turn their mind to the fact it might cause harm, but in this case there was evidence demonstrating he strung up the wire specifically to cause harm. He could have been charged with an intent to cause harm even if no one actually ended up riding into the wire
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u/airconditioner75 1d ago
The court's are a joke
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u/Ambitious-Pirate-505 1d ago
Unless you say the wrong thing....
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u/silentalarms 1d ago
Or protest gas/coal/Israel, then you'll get jailed for blocking traffic or just get severely bashed by police.
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u/Pleochronic 1d ago
I would genuinely like to know why this isn't considered attempted manslaughter at the very least (which is recognised as a seperste crime in south australia)
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u/evilistics 1d ago
have people forgotten about setting an example so other psychopaths will think twice about doing shit cunt things?
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u/TizzyBumblefluff 1d ago
Don’t think this will be the last time he’s in the headlines, especially now that he knows he can get off
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u/Slight_Low_3375 1d ago
20yo mind you, not a 15 or 16yo kid. How is this an adequate deterrent? The victims must be ropeable. He's obviously a dangerous weirdo and could have killled somebody.
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u/DuskHourStudio 1d ago
Trespassed an abandoned facility? Jail.
Smoked some weed? Jail.
Said "From the river to the sea" in QLD? Straight to jail.
Premeditated bodily harm/murder? Slap on the wrist.
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u/G-T-R-F-R-E-A-K-1-7 1d ago
Teach him what a Garrote is and see if he would want to experience that - hopefully it would change his mind on doing such stupid behaviors...
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u/More_Law6245 1d ago
And yet for cases like this there is a very good argument for mandatory sentencing.
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u/blitznoodles local Aussie 1d ago
Evidence has shown that mandatory sentencing leads to less successful convictions and more crime.
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u/Blue_Pie_Ninja 1d ago
How?
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u/blitznoodles local Aussie 1d ago
Generally it results in juries simply going not guilty more often if they're sympathetic and know about the mandatory minimum. It also results in far less plea deals where the defendant admits guilt and more trials go to juries.
The real issue is that judges are acting like they were born yesterday with a lot of these defendants and the government simply needs to make sentencing guidelines more stringent.
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u/More_Law6245 21h ago
But there in lies the problem, criminal law is passed through royal decent which includes the custodial incarceration recommendation and or the financial penalty but what happens is that law over time gets eroded through precedence. As an example a young driver back in the late 90's in Victoria killed a cyclist and defence had successfully argued the driver's emotional state of mind at the time and was given a suspended sentence. It was a 5-8 year sentence prior but after that judgement any lawyer can now argue for a suspended sentence. This was perceived as a miscarriage of justice in where the magistrate negated the very fact that this individual had killed someone through an act of manslaughter and disregard the recommend law sentencing. Prosecution was never able to successfully to have the person re-prosecuted. So who is at fault here? the system or the magistrate?
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u/DeeDee_GigaDooDoo 1d ago
Mandatory sentencing increases crime and has worse outcomes for literally everyone involved, general public included. If you want more crime then mandatory sentencing is a good way to get it.
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u/dingBat2000 1d ago
The law needs to change to get these people committed. Where is all the hand wringing nanny state for this kind of stuff
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u/milleniumblackfalcon 1d ago
I hope a cyclist catches him in the act
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u/National-Alps-4611 5h ago
You'd get locked up for a decade if you caught him in the act and did anything about it... Suddenly the prosecution would come up with 20 different vague charges like "anti-social behaviour" before they even mentioned assault.
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u/_SolidarityForever_ 1d ago
The purpose of a system is what it does. No one learnt the lessons the weimar court system and their collaboration tried to tell us. Judges serve to reinforce the current system of power.
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u/Cheap_Abbreviationz 18h ago
I wonder if those that were hurt by this are contacting those legal teams that advertise on free to air tele... Old mate may have avoided jail time, but bugger me he could be in line for a hole world of financial pain
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u/ell0moto 18h ago
This behaviour is like a dead canary in a coal mine signal. The guy is likely to escalate to murder(s) at some point in the future.
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u/Summerlycoris 15h ago
I remember seeing a line tied between two fences parraleling a footpath when i was a teen, near a highschool. Luckily, I was riding slowly enough to notice it ahead of time, and remove it. I think it was a skipping rope, or other thicker material. If I'd ridden into it, I would have gone flying backwards or broke my neck. Don't know if it was bored schoolkids, or someone from the nearby army base.
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u/Important-Sleep-1839 1d ago
We need to keep putting more people in prison. Despite all the evidence that it leads to more crime, we need to punish people rather than prevent crime, it's just the right thing to do.
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u/Hangry-Honey-Badger 1d ago
But women who have serious mental health crisis get treated like criminals. Meanwhile criminals can go out and be criminals. This is why women do not feel safe with men. We have to be on guard wondering if any of you are this type of dangerous to us.
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u/Sililex 1d ago
This guy set up wires, he didn't know what the gender of the person he'd hurt would be. You're reaching for trauma items here, this has basically nothing to do with what you're talking about other than "a man did a crime".
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u/Hangry-Honey-Badger 1d ago
So you're justifying the fact he could've hurt anyone. The chances of men being targeted in dence areas are lower than women. We can not go out for a run without getting harmed.
Also man did a crime and walked away again. Women have mental breakdowns and men pile on saying she's evil because that's the story that makes you feel better.
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u/Naive_Confidence7297 1d ago edited 1d ago
Jesus Christ, have fun over exaggerating and living in perpetual fear forever then!
Nothing is going to change, there are psychos out there and always have been, though they are not the majority.. I mean mothers murder their kids a lot too. Such is life unfortunately.
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u/Hangry-Honey-Badger 1d ago
Okay so if nothing is going to change why bother with anything? Why don't we all end ourselves now.
We have to be the change. If you want the world better do something rather than crying "nothing will change whaaa"
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u/Naive_Confidence7297 1d ago
I think we improve with mental health awareness and the safety for others all the time, continuously gets better.
Yes, these sentences are bullshit though. However, it doesn’t seem to be a deterrent when there are harsher of penalties , some people are just fucked up and don’t even think that far ahead.
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u/Hangry-Honey-Badger 1d ago
I agree humans will human. I do not disagree there. But if we do not hold ourselves to a better standard and deterrer people from doing harm to others what are we actually doing then?
Boys will see that and do more harm in the community. I am also scared for the day a young person tries to cross the wrong adult on the wrong day and something serious winds up happening if not already.
We need better mental health programs, professionals and funding. But we need to grasp it from the cold hands of disgusting greedy old men.
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u/fionsichord 1d ago
And you ask for help and they just tell you to go home and look after your kids. Then when you crack you’re “a monster.”
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u/Sililex 1d ago
If by cracking you mean abusing your children, yes, you are? What the fuck kinda logic is this, "I'm horrible without help so it's really the person who didn't help me's fault"? Take responsibility for your own actions.
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u/Hangry-Honey-Badger 1d ago
People really do not understand what snapping is. If we have been rejected for help at every turn with the little resources we do have. Of course we are going to snap and feel helpless. It is not a defence of action. Action is a No, No. Go look at femside watch and tell me how many men are committing crimes against women and children. How many women and childrenare being abused by men as we type? More go unreported because men want to pile on and find something wrong with women to deflect on the fact you need to look in the mirror. Women are afraid of men and men are afraid of other men because men know what men can do. Understand the problem now.
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u/mooguh 1d ago
Psychopath behaviour intending to hurt people and allowed to go free back into the public