Four people accused of fatally bashing Indigenous Perth schoolboy Cassius Turvey will have to wait until 2025 to stand trial for murder.
Cassius, a 15-year-old Noongar Yamatji teenager, was allegedly chased down and attacked with a metal pole as he walked home from school with friends on October 13 last year.
He suffered serious head injuries and died in hospital 10 days later, triggering an outpouring of grief and anger across the nation, with some Indigenous leaders condemning the alleged assault as cowardly and racist.
Brodie Lee Palmer, 28, Mitchell Colin Forth, 25, Jack Steven James Brearley, 22, and Aleesha Louise Gilmore, 21, pleaded not guilty to murder in May.
They appeared on Monday via video and audio link in the Supreme Court in Perth where Justice Joseph McGrath provisionally listed their trial for February 10.
It’s expected to run for eight weeks until April 7 due to the large amount of evidence the Crown is expected to present against the group, including CCTV footage.
Prosecutor Ben Stanwix said it expected to file the brief of evidence next week.
Brearley’s application for bail was refused, with Justice Natalie Whitby finding there were no exceptional circumstances to support it or conditions that could be adequately applied if he were released.
Brearley, Palmer, Forth and Gilmore were remanded in custody until October 26 when they are scheduled to reappear for a status conference.
Brearley, Forth, and another man named Ethan Robert MacKenzie, 19, are also accused of unlawfully detaining and wounding another 15-year-old boy in the days before Cassius was attacked.
Gilmore has been charged with unlawfully detaining the same teen.
MacKenzie will stand trial at the same time as the other accused.
Brearley, Forth and Palmer have also denied assaulting and stealing a baseball cap and crutches from another teen on the same day as Cassius was allegedly attacked. Gilmore is accused of assaulting the same boy and pleaded not guilty.
Brearley appeared from Casuarina Prison in Perth’s south and Palmer, Forth and MacKenzie appeared from Hakea Prison. Gilmore was in Greenough Regional Prison, about 400km north of Perth.
Brearley was charged in October, before Palmer, Forth, MacKenzie and Gilmore were charged in January.
Cassius has been remembered as a loving son and a role model to his friends. He had started his own lawn-mowing business and was invited at age 11 to deliver an acknowledgement of country at the WA parliament.
Members of Brearley and Cassius’s families attended court on Monday but they declined to speak to media.