South Australian bikies have been jailed over a violent brawl during which Hell's Angels defector Christopher Wayne Hudson was shot twice and others stabbed.
Senior Finks MC member Shane Scott Bowden, 36, yesterday was sentenced in the Brisbane District Court to six-and-a-half-years' jail by a judge who declared him a serious violent offender. His co-accused, Nicholas "The Knife" John Forbes, 39, received an 18-month sentence for assault occasioning bodily harm whilst armed.
Their trial heard Forbes attacked Hudson, a former Finks member, in front of 1800 people at a kickboxing tournament in March, 2006, before Bowden shot Hudson in the face and back.Graphic video footage played to the court showed the tournament at the Pines Resort, on the Gold Coast, descended into chaos as patrons threw punches, chairs and glasses at each other.Forbes had travelled with seven other Finks to Queensland as part of a national manhunt for Hudson after he defected to the Hells Angels and tried to recruit other Finks members.The Finks were dispatched from Adelaide with the instructions to remove a full-size tattoo of the club's colours from Hudson's back with acid and paint scrapers.Among them was Benjamin Young, 26, who was executed outside his Payneham house two weeks ago when he was shot twice in the back with a large-calibre, semi-automatic pistol.
The Victorian Supreme Court this week heard Hudson was on the run from the Finks when he opened fire with a pistol in Melbourne's central business district, killing a lawyer and seriously wounding a German backpacker and his model girlfriend.
Hudson's lawyer said Hudson was high on methampethamine and alcohol and later tried to take his own life when he realised the enormity of what he had done.The shoot-out came days after Hudson fired shots from the pistol as he drove over a Melbourne bridge at high speed with Collingwood player Alan Didak, who was suspended last month for his involvement in a drink-driving car accident with star player Heath Shaw.Hudson faces a possible life in jail after pleading guilty to one count of murder, two of attempted murder and one of intentionally causing serious injury.