Rocky Matskassy was shot by Daniel Darrington after first being shot during a struggle for the gun. Justice Coghlan said the jury's verdict indicated they could not be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Darrington deliberately caused Mr Matskassy's death, but that he had intended to kill him when believing he was still alive. The judge said Darrington regretted what he had done but had shown no remorse. Both the prosecution and defence could not find any similar cases of attempted murder in Australia. Darrington claimed the pair had struggled with a gun during an altercation at a Melton South house in the early hours of March 22, 2014, before Mr Matskassy was accidentally shot in the head. Darrington told police he then shot Mr Matskassy twice more in the head when he was making jerking and twitching movements to put him out of his misery.

The medical evidence suggested these movements could have been involuntary responses after death. When police arrived at about 2.23am, Mr Matskassy was lying dead on the kitchen floor wrapped in a black sheet. Darrington later told a psychologist he had been like "a robot" after shooting Mr Matskassy the first time. "I started to panic and didn't know what to do. He was twitching and I felt sorry for him. I shot him twice, more. I wish it never happened." Darrington, who denied planning to dispose of the body, told police that after firing the first shot, he went into Mr Matskassy's bedroom where he found a small box of ammunition, reloaded the gun and went back to where Mr Matskassy was lying slouched over in the kitchen.

He claimed Mr Matskassy was twitching as though he was having an epileptic seizure so he stood there for a few minutes thinking what to do "and then for some reason I shot him again ... I wasn't sure if he was dead or alive." During the trial, defence barrister John Desmond told the jury it could not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr Matskassy had not died from the first shot. "The issue is not did Darrington believe the man was alive. The issue is objectively, was he factually alive or dead?" Mr Desmond said. "If someone's already dead and you then try to kill him, how can that be attempted murder? "But the law in this state is because you have the criminal intent to kill and if you, the accused, thought the person was alive, even if he was in fact dead, the law says that would be attempted murder."

The jury found Darrington not guilty of murder or the lesser charge of manslaughter, but guilty of attempted murder. Mr Matskassy's sister, Mercedesz, told the court during a pre-sentence hearing for Darrington how their mother had been murdered in New Zealand when Mercedesz was 12 and Rocky was nine. Ms Matskassy said her mother's body was dumped in Wellington Harbour and her father charged with the murder but he went to trial and was found not guilty. The two children, who had been put in foster care, were then returned to their father and they moved to Australia but Ms Matskassy said she and Rocky always suspected their father had killed their mother.