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In the days before an armed teenager boarded and allegedly attempted to hijack a commercial airplane, he used the internet to search airports and the shooting down of planes.
The 17-year-old, who cannot be identified due to his age, had allegedly begun falling out with friends, telling them he had been talking to a girl, made new friends who had “shown him the way”, and found his life’s purpose.
Shortly after, in early March 2025, the teen donned a high-vis vest and is alleged to have brought a gun onto Jetstar flight JQ610 from Avalon Airport to Sydney, where he was subdued by a passenger.
He later told the man who held him down, passenger Barry Clark, that he was thankful and relieved that he’d been stopped, a children’s court was told on Wednesday.
The prosecution is now fighting to have the case moved from the children’s court to a higher court, either the County or Supreme Court, arguing the penalties available at the lower court are insufficient for the level of alleged offending.
The prosecutor noted the children’s court could only impose a maximum sentence of four years in youth detention, or two years in supervised custody if the boy was found to have a defence of mental impairment.
They said the seriousness of the alleged conduct, including the enormity of the allegations and the number of people on the plane, warranted the matter going before a jury and not solely a magistrate, as would be the case if the matter remains in the children’s court.
The court heard the alleged offending was considered and planned over an extensive period of time, and included the boy catching a taxi for the first time from work before making his way to the regional airport, breaking through a fence and accessing a plane armed with a gun in three pieces.
“He succeeded to the point of getting into the plane and making threats and had the means available to him to put those threats into effect and therefore achieve his goal,” the prosecutor said.
The teen’s defence lawyer argued the children’s court was the best place to hear the case for a range of reasons, including that the case would be heard sooner.
He said the complex nature of the case, including emotive material and medical language, could be challenging for a jury that is expected to be impartial.
“One thing is clear, [the accused] was not thinking clearly at the time this offence was committed,” he said.
“He was a young man under tremendous mental strain.
“The facts of this case are largely not in dispute. The real issue [a court will be called on to decide] is the issue of the state of mind of a young person.”
The defence lawyer said it was possible his client was suffering from a complex delusional disorder and that he had anxiety, traits of autism spectrum disorder and had experienced hallucinations, PTSD and flashbacks.
“This is an unusual combination of factors influencing his mental state,” the boy’s lawyer said.
The court heard the boy, who was 17 at the time and is now 19, had no prior convictions, had cooperated with authorities, made full admissions and been described by medical staff as impeccably polite and naive.
“It’s remarkable how he got through the fence undetected, and that the high-vis vest and a tool belt was a sufficient disguise to allow him to walk casually onto the airplane,” the lawyer said.
“When he did, the reality is this was only ever going to end one way. There was very little prospect of him ever succeeding.”
The court also heard the teen had allegedly armed himself with an “improvised explosive device”, which the defence described as being an obvious fake, had drawn a diagram of a bomb, collected bottles of beer with rags in them, and had an internet search history dating back to October 2024 involving aviation.
He had allegedly searched for maps of a Syrian airport, Avalon Airport, an aviation history museum, a Syrian airbase, and the shooting down of Russian and Turkish military aircraft before the alleged offending.
One person later told police the accused was interested in girls and asking them what they should do, before later pushing people away and referencing “finding a great path”.
“The next day he goes to Avalon Airport,” the defence said.
“He says he felt a sense of relief and calm [when arrested]. His situation was desperate … dire. An extraordinary case close to duress.”
The court heard once on the plane, the teenager whispered his demands to staff.
While he was being restrained by Clark, the teen told him: “You’re a good man, I know what you’re doing, and I respect you,” and later told police the people who stopped him were “heroes” he wanted to thank.
The arrest, he told police, was the “biggest weight off my shoulders”.
His defence lawyer said the boy – who faced court via video link from custody on Wednesday – did not want to alarm the passengers, and flagged that punitive punishment on immature brains was more likely to result in recidivism.
Other parts of the prosecution case remain suppressed and cannot be reported, including the alleged motivation behind the incident.
In March 2025, the court granted a suppression order banning any reporting of the names of “any foreigner” or “foreign entities” the boy may have communicated with, after federal police argued it was in the interests of national security.
The magistrate is expected to hand down his decision on which court will hear the case next month.
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