Mongol Mark Graham loses final appeal over attempted murder of Bandido Jacques Teamo
L to R, Jacques Teamo and Mark Graham were captured on CCTV footage at Robina shopping centre, before Graham shot Teamo in front of crowds of shoppers.
An innocent passer-by was injured in the crossfire and shoppers were sent fleeing when, on a busy Saturday afternoon in late April 2012, Mark James Graham strode into the Robina shopping centre and opened fire on rival gang member Jacques Teamo.
Graham, who sports the facial tattoos “carnage”, “revenge” and the bikie tag “1%” was visiting family members on the Gold Coast from his Victorian base, when in what was described as a “chance encounter” he spotted Bandidos member Teamo in a store.
CCTV footage then captured the entire incident, in which the Gold Coast’s simmering bikie war was thrust jarringly into the public realm.
As Graham and Teamo became engaged in a tense standoff, shoppers continued to walk past them.
Graham’s victim, former Bandido bikie gang member Jacques Teamo, outside court in Brisbane.Source:AAP
A man pushing a baby in a pram can be seen passing the pair just moments before gunfire erupted, while a good Samaritan sporting boardshorts and a t-shirt stopped to return a $10 note to Graham, that, unbeknown to the man, fell from the bikie’s bag when he removed his gun.
Within seconds of the good Samaritan moving away, Graham opened fire on Teamo, hitting him in the arm.
As Teamo ran away, Graham pursued him, firing a second time but missing his target and hitting passer-by Kathy Devitt in the hip.
As the sounds of gunshots ring out, the busy crowd of lunch time shoppers are then running for safety.
Graham returned to Victoria, where he was arrested two days later.
Graham’s second victim, passer-by Kathy Devitt, was shot in the hip, after Graham missed Teamo with his second shot.Source:News Limited
In the intervening four years, Graham argued, unsuccessfully, across three legal jurisdictions he acted in self-defence, arguing Teamo had pulled a knife on him.
On Wednesday morning, the country’s highest court, the High Court of Australia, became the third criminal realm to reject his claim, after a Queensland Supreme Court jury found him guilty of attempted murder and the Court of Appeal later upheld the conviction.
It was his final avenue of appeal.
Graham will now serve the remainder of the 12-year sentence the Queensland Supreme Court handed him in late 2014.
The shooting was a defining moment in the-then Campbell Newman-led government’s subsequent war on outlaw motorcycle gangs.
While bikie turf wars had long been part of the fabric of southeast Queensland, and in particular, the so-called Glitter Strip of the Gold Coast, where their criminal activities flourished, when Graham opened fire on the crowded second floor of Robina Shopping Centre that day, the war spilled jarringly into the public realm.
Mongols bikie Mark James Graham will now spend at least another decade in jail.Source:Supplied
Teamo, now a former Bandido, survived the shooting and went on to gain notoriety about 18 months later as the ringleader of the infamous Broadbeach restaurant brawl, the largest public bikie brawl in Queensland history, in which 18 gang members were charged.
It was that brawl that sparked the Newman Government’s strict anti-bikie laws, which made it a crime for patched gang members to associate publicly in groups.
With Wednesday’s High Court ruling marking the final chapter in Graham’s legal fight, he will remain in the jail cell he has resided in since the jury in his Supreme Court trial returned a guilty verdict to both the attempted murder of Teamo and the unlawful wounding of Ms Devitt on October 1, 2014.
He will remain there for at least another decade.