Suspended sentence for Vic uni rampage

November 14, 2008, 6:36 pm

A volunteer fireman feared he was part of a US-style university massacre when a Melbourne student pointed what appeared to be a semi-automatic weapon at him and told him he was about to die.

Warren Davis' life flashed before his eyes as Dylan Thomas Kennedy, dressed in army fatigues
and wearing a red bandanna, stood just metres from him and pointed the imitation gun at him, Davis told AAP.

Kennedy shouted: "Get the f*** out of here, I am going to f***ing get you, I am going to f***ing kill you."

The media student had just trashed dorm rooms at Swinburne University's Lilydale campus and was running around the grounds armed with the toy gun and yelling he was going to shoot people.

Kennedy on Friday has been handed a 15-month suspended jail sentence by the Victorian County Court for the rampage in the early hours of September 10 last year, just months after the Virginia Tech massacre in the US in which 32 people were killed.

Mr Davis, the Lilydale Country Fire Authority (CFA) captain who was at the university in response to a fire call, said Kennedy came running towards him shouting and pointing the gun at him.

"It was like one of these massacres that you see in America, that is exactly what we thought it was going to be," Mr Davis told AAP after the sentencing.

"Myself and the other crew members we thought we are all going to get shot here.

"I thought I was going to get a bullet."

Kennedy then pointed the gun at other members of the volunteer CFA crew.

"It all happened that quick, they say your life flashes before your eyes and it did for the four of us," Mr Davis, a father of three, said.

The situation ended when a policeman recognised the weapon as an imitation gun used for computer games, and subdued Kennedy with capsicum spray, the court was told on Friday.

Davis and CFA lieutenants Mark Owens, Trevor Dean and Michael Satori had been called to a building fire at the campus.

"You wake up in the middle of the night to attend a fire, expecting to get there and see a room or building on fire and you are confronted by something totally different," Mr Davis said.

"We are all volunteers, we are not paid for that."

All the firefighters involved had undergone counselling, and one of them still had nightmares about the rampage, the court was told.

Sentencing Kennedy, Judge Margaret Rizkalla agreed the firefighters feared for their lives.

"Even though the weapon you were using was imitation, those involved were not able to ascertain that," Judge Rizkalla said.

The court was told that a month earlier Kennedy showed a group of men in a McDonald's restaurant a cap-gun that also appeared real and claimed he was a contract killer.

Judge Rizkalla also ordered Kennedy, who pleaded guilty to charges including threatening to kill, destroying property and possession of an unregistered general category handgun, take part in a community based order that includes treatment for drug and alcohol addiction.

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