‘Weak dog’ suffers puncture wound in struggle with notorious criminal
A notorious Canberra criminal walked into a sleeping friend’s house and violently struggled with the man when he woke, calling him a “weak dog” and ultimately leaving him with a punctured abdomen.
It is about to get even longer after he appeared in the ACT Supreme Court via audio-visual link on Friday to be arraigned on charges of burglary and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
“Yeah, I’m guilty,” he said in relation to both.
The camera pointed at him in a remote room at Canberra’s jail was positioned so only the bottom half of his face was visible.
Following the entry of the pleas, Crown prosecutor Anthony Williamson tendered to the court an agreed statement of facts.
The document shows Massey and his victim had been friends for a few years at the time of the relevant incident in September 2020.
Matthew Massey, who has spent significant periods of his life behind bars. Picture: Facebook
Massey spent some time staying at this man’s place in Flynn, where he at one stage grew “agitated” and chased the victim around the house while making threats.
This episode prompted the victim to check into a hotel for a while.
While he was gone, Massey stopped staying at the Flynn house and the man returned to his home without hearing from him.
Massey came back late one night and walked in, uninvited, to the victim’s bedroom, where the man had fallen asleep while playing an Xbox game.
The pair ended up arguing about Massey’s girlfriend and the victim told the 45-year-old offender to “f— off”.
A violent struggle ensued in the bedroom, with the victim receiving what is described in the agreed facts as “a puncture injury to the left side of his abdomen”.
The document does not explain exactly what caused this injury.
During the altercation, the victim’s teenage son woke to the sounds of banging and glass smashing.
The boy heard Massey shouting that the victim was a “weak dog”.
After the frightened teenager yelled at Massey to get out of the house, he heard the 45-year-old say: “Shut your maggot mouth.”
The boy’s yelling distracted Massey enough to allow the victim to arm himself with a “Bundi stick” in self-defence.
Massey eventually left and the victim, who “realised his side was wet”, woke a friend who had been asleep on a lounge.
“Matty just got me,” the victim told this man, who helped bandage the wound.
The victim later sought treatment at Calvary Hospital, where he was found to have a wound about three centimetres long and a partially collapsed lung.
“[The victim] received suturing for his wound under local anaesthetic and returned home,” the facts say.
“He will have a permanent scar.”
Massey was arrested last October and subsequently made a number of unsuccessful bail applications, during which he denied the offending.
Following the entry of guilty pleas on Friday, his barrister, Duncan Berents, signalled an intention to seek a referral to the court’s drug and alcohol sentencing list.
Offenders deemed eligible for this can be given drug and alcohol treatment orders, with jail sentences of between one and four years suspended.
Chief Justice Helen Murrell listed Massey’s matter to go before Justice David Mossop on November 3.
She said that judge could deal with the proposed referral and either indicate or impose a sentence on that day.
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