An accused triple murderer has denied repeatedly before a jury that he shot dead three people at the front gate of his high country cattle station in the remote mountain ranges of North Queensland four years ago.
Darryl Valroy Young took the stand Thursday in the Townsville Supreme Court, where he is charged with murdering three members of a family from a rural property which borders his property, Shannonvale Station, on August 4, 2022.
“No… No… No… No,” he replied under cross examination, when Crown prosecutor David Nardone asked in succession whether he’d killed neighbouring cattle graziers Merv and Maree Schwarz, and Maree’s son Graham Tighe.
He’s also charged with attempting to kill Graham’s brother Ross Tighe, who managed to escape the shooting and survive despite suffering a bullet wound to the abdomen.
“No… ‘cause I wasn’t there,” Mr Young said on the thirteenth day of his trial.
Prosecution witnesses have told the court that the night before the shooting, Mr Young had phoned Graham Tighe and demanded his family meet him at the Shannonvale front gate at 8am the following morning.
The court heard Mr Young had accused the Tighe Schwarz family of stealing cattle while mustering on their property, Sutherland Station, during the days leading up the shooting.
But Mr Young has claimed his relationship with the Tighe-Schwarz family had been entirely cooperative for the whole period they’d been neighbours.
He said his relationship with Graham Tighe had been “excellent, excellent, excellent” and that “we got on really well”.
He said he’d previously bought Ross Tighe a carton of beer because “he’d done such a good job” bulldozing to clear land along Shannonvale-Sutherland fence line.
“I didn’t believe they were stealing cattle,” Mr Young told jurors.
Prosecutor Nardone suggested Mr Young was lying when he claimed that rifle ammunition, found at the Shannonvale homestead and matching spent bullets shells found at the front gate crime scene, did not belong to him.
“I’m not lying,” Mr Young said.
Mr Young, 63, remains under cross examination.
The trial is expected to run into a fourth week.
Jurors have heard Mr Young’s brother, Quentin Young, and mother-in-law, Sharon Young, will give evidence as defence witnesses.
The Crown alleges there were 14 legally-owned firearms found by detectives at a second property owned by Mr Young, near the town of Bowen, during police’s investigation of the shooting.
The Crown alleges the murder weapon was a .30-30 calibre, although no such weapon has been presented to the jury, and no such weapon was licensed to Mr Young.
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