{"id":68794,"date":"2026-08-10T07:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T07:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/68794\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T07:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T07:46:11","slug":"woman-cleared-of-cassius-turveys-murder-avoids-jail-over-suspended-sentence-breach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/68794\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman cleared of Cassius Turvey’s murder avoids jail over suspended sentence breach"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman found not guilty of murdering Perth school boy Cassius Turvey has avoided being sent to jail for driving without a licence.<\/p>\n

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains an image of a person who has died, used with the permission of their family.<\/p>\n

Cassius Turvey was chased down and beaten with a metal pole while walking with friends after school in Perth’s east in October 2022. He died in hospital ten days later.<\/p>\n

Aleesha Gilmore stood trial for the 15-year-old’s murder along with three other men. She was found not guilty, but was convicted of assaulting a teenager and unlawfully detaining two others in the days before the attack.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Court sketch shows Aleesha Gilmore, in a blue jacket, at the sentencing trial for the murder of Cassius Turvey.\u00a0 (Supplied: Anne Barnetson)<\/p>\n

She was handed a 15-month prison sentence for those offences in June 2025, suspended for two years with strict community conditions.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Gilmore appeared before the Supreme Court via video link from a secure location for driving without a licence, an alleged breach of her conditional suspended imprisonment order.<\/p>\n

Opportunity for rehabilitation<\/p>\n

State prosecutor Benjamin Stanwix told the court Gilmore lost her licence in December 2025 after police found she was driving under the influence of alcohol.<\/p>\n

The court was told Gilmore blew over 0.08 \u2014 with a blood test showing her alcohol level at 0.098.<\/p>\n

She was fined and disqualified from holding a licence for seven months at the time, but was convicted in June of driving without a licence and given a further nine-month disqualification.<\/p>\n

\"Exterior<\/p>\n

Warren Pearce says the court ruling went against the intentions of the Act. (ABC News: Briana Shepherd)<\/p>\n

Mr Stanwix told the court even though driving without a licence breaches the terms of a suspended sentence, the state was not asking for an immediate term of imprisonment as that would not give Gilmore the opportunity for rehabilitation.<\/p>\n

He said the state did not take that position lightly and told the court he did not want Gilmore to leave with the impression the state was “a soft touch”.<\/p>\n

Gilmore’s lawyer, Simon Freitag, said Gilmore had been following the terms of her suspended sentence, which include attending counselling and taking part in programs.<\/p>\n

Mr Freitag said his client had managed to get some cleaning work until they asked for a police check, and was now actively looking for FIFO work.<\/p>\n

Cassius Turvey grew from shy boy into a leader<\/a><\/p>\n

A memorial plaque for Cassius Turvey in his community of Midland, east of Perth, sits as an enduring reminder of the legacy he left behind: “gentle giant”, “huggable teddy bear”, and a “young leader”.<\/p>\n

No immediate imprisonment<\/p>\n

Chief Justice Peter Quinlan said he was satisfied it would be unjust to order a term of immediate imprisonment, considering Gilmore was half way through her suspended sentence, but that she needed to stay on the “straight and narrow”.<\/p>\n

He told Gilmore she was not responsible for the death of Cassius Turvey but said her notoriety meant her name would probably always be associated with that.<\/p>\n

“I appreciate given your notoriety it makes it more difficult for you to obtain work,” he told Gilmore.<\/p>\n

“But that’s not a reason to give up.”<\/p>\n

Gilmore was fined $500, to be paid on top of the $1,000 she was already fined for driving without a licence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman found not guilty of murdering Perth school boy Cassius Turvey has avoided being sent to jail…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[90639,82892,82887,82889,82888,82890,82891,24611,335,466,463,465,464],"class_list":["post-68794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-perth","tag-aleesha-gilmore","tag-cassius","tag-cassius-turvey","tag-cassius-turvey-death","tag-cassius-turvey-murder","tag-cassius-turvey-trial","tag-jack-brearley","tag-mechelle-turvey","tag-perth","tag-perth-courts","tag-perth-news","tag-wa-courts","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}