Sri Lankan refugee found guilty of stabbing neighbour

A man who fatally stabbed a fellow Sri Lankan refugee has been found guilty of murder by an Adelaide jury, which earlier heard the crime was committed after the victim called his killer a “lady boy”.

Ketheshwaran Sivaperuman, 35, bled to death at his Elizabeth South home in January last year.

The Supreme Court previously heard he was stabbed with a large kitchen knife with such force the blade damaged his spine and exposed his intestine.

It took the jury just two hours to unanimously convict Mr Sivaperuman’s neighbour Satheeswaran Suppiah, 31, of murder.

Prosecutor Mark Norman said Suppiah hid the knife in his shorts, got into an argument with the victim and stabbed him.

“On a hot day, after drinking hot liquor, his hot temper lead him to murder a man,” he said.

“He was angry that the deceased had parked his car in the driveway, angry because the deceased had called him a ‘lady boy’.

“All the evidence suggests the accused remained at the scene being hostile and aggressive towards the deceased, even after the fatal stabbing.”

The court heard both men had previously lived together but the victim moved into a house on the opposite side of Griffiths Street after the pair had a falling out.

Both men came to Australia as refugees from Sri Lanka.

Mr Norman said Suppiah repeatedly tried to blame another man for the death, telling police he only had the knife to cut apples.

Suppiah claimed another man grabbed his hand and forced the knife into the victim’s stomach.

But Mr Norman said all of the evidence suggested the other man was not even there and that Suppiah deliberately took the knife with him.

“The accused’s account that he only had it with him for cutting apples or being playful is a nonsense,” he said.

Suppiah showed little emotion after the verdict and kept his head down as he was shown from the dock.

His lawyer, Greg Mead, had earlier urged the jury not to convict him of murder.

“This man is no murderer,” he said.

“What sort of murderer is it who deliberately and intentionally inflicts a fatal stab wound and then immediately rings the police and ambulance and asks them to in fact save the victim, then hangs around in his own house across the road from the scene of the crime?

“Is that the behaviour of a deliberate, calculating killer or a man under the influence of alcohol who has done something that was not meant to happen, was unintentional and accidental?”

Submissions on Suppiah’s sentence will be heard in July.

Source: ABC