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Matthew Lawson, 26, hadn’t slept for a week when he snapped at work and decided he was going to kill his colleague, leaving his demolition site armed with a claw hammer.
“I’m gonna take him down with me, let me take him down with me,” Lawson told his foreman, before jumping in his car, and heading to the City Beach demolition site where Trae Black, 31, was working.
Victim Trae Black.Credit: 9News Perth
In a drug-induced psychosis, Lawson ran at Black and swung the hammer at his head, only missing because his victim dodged.
Black then fled to West Coast Highway and hid in bushes as Lawson circled the area seven times in his car for around 17 minutes.
When Black thought he had left, he emerged from the bushes and began walking along West Coast Highway.
Lawson, however, spotted him and sped at him, chasing him up a bank and hitting him with his car. He then got out the vehicle, laughing, and repeatedly struck Black to the head with a hammer.
Black was badly injured the incident, with his right leg severed below the knee and his pelvis, skull and jaw fractured.
When police arrested Lawson for assault, he replied: “Nah, murder. Isn’t he dead? If he’s not dead, I’m gonna go back and kill him.”
Black’s life was saved by passersby, including an off-duty doctor, who provided emergency aid on the side of the road while waiting for paramedics.
He remained in a coma for 11 days and says the incident fundamentally changed the direction of his life.
Matthew Lawson captured on CCTV before he ran over colleague Trae Black.Credit: 9 News Perth
He suffers from chronic pain, wears a prosthetic leg, and can no longer work in a physical capacity, forcing him to be dependent on family and his partner.
“This did not just happen to me, it happened to all of us,” he said in his victim impact statement.
“I grieve about the life I once had, and the life I imagined for myself … there are days when I feel depressed and overwhelmed.”
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During Lawson’s sentencing in the Supreme Court of Western Australia on Tuesday, his defence lawyer David McCallum acknowledged that nothing could take away from the seriousness of the “prolonged and ferocious attack” Black endured.
He claimed Lawson, who used methamphetamine regularly, was suffering from an acute paranoid psychotic episode at the time of the incident on July 29, 2024.
He says Lawson had used drugs from a young age, sparked by the social isolation and limited job opportunities available to him due to suffering from a hearing impairment.
Justice Natalie Whitby sentenced him to 14 years jail for attempting to murder Black.
He will be eligible for parole in 2036, and was served a lifetime violence restraining order to never go within 50 metres of Black.
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