Bikie accused of shooting 11yo

Updated May 15, 2013 09:06:04

The Adelaide District Court has been told the 11-year-old son of a member of the Finks Motorcycle Club was shot in the leg as part of an escalating war between gangs.

Arron James Cluse, 23, is on trial charged with aggravated serious criminal trespass and two aggravated counts of endangering life.

He is accused of storming into the Semaphore home of Finks gang member Mark Sandery in October 2011, shooting Sandery's son twice in the leg and narrowly missing the boy's brother with two other shots.

Prosecutor Sandi McDonald SC told the court Cluse was a nominee of the Hells Angels, a group effectively at war with the Finks.

"The evidence will be that the accused, at the time of this offending, was a nominee or on the verge of being a nominee for a motorcycle gang that was effectively at war with the gang of which the father of the children was a senior member," she said.

"The boys' father is affiliated with the Finks Motorcycle Gang and the accused with the Hells Angels."

The court was told glass fragments allegedly from the Semaphore home were found in Cluse's car and on a balaclava found in Cluse's bedroom that allegedly also had his DNA on it.

Ms McDonald said Sandery had not been at his home at the time of the attack but there had been a clear plan to terrorise his family.

"It will be the prosecution submission that to consider circumstantial evidence like DNA and glass fragments, absent that connection between these two men, will be completely artificial. It's relevant to motive," she told the hearing.

"It's relevant to explain why someone would engage in what must be seen, to your right-minded person, as completely violent and antisocial behaviour and the evidence that the status of a nominee and the requirement to do whatever they were told were particularly relevant on that topic. Effectively, once someone involves themself in a gang like this, they are subordinate to the codes and rules of that gang as opposed to wider social moral values.

"There was clearly some sort of plan to terrorise the occupants of that house."

Topics: courts-and-trials, crime, law-crime-and-justice, semaphore-5019, adelaide-5000, sa, australia

First posted May 15, 2013 07:58:42