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Matthew Heyward has lodged an appeal against his murder conviction after the trial into the killing of his mother Glenys in 2007.
Heyward, 22, and farm worker Jeremy Minter were found guilty of murder for allegedly helping Heyward’s father, Neil, track down and kill his Glenys Heyward, in a fight over property.
The appeal application has been lodged with the Court of Criminal Appeal and is not likely to be listed for a hearing until next month.
After four decades as South Australia’s home of elite and leisure swimming, the Adelaide Aquatic Centre is poised for a makeover.
The City Council has voted to upgrade the centre on the northern edge of the parklands at North Adelaide.
It had toyed with the idea of building a new facility in the CBD instead.
But having opted for renovations, an initial allocation of $2.5 million has been made to replace the centre’s leaking roof.
Swimmers might not mind getting wet, but not when the water comes from above.
Council CEO Peter Smith says the search is on for a contractor to do the work.
“That price may go up or down,” he conceded. “If it goes up we’d have to look at our budget in terms of additional funding that we could make available to it.”
The Aquatic Centre may close in July for up to 12 weeks for work to be done.
Mr Smith says it is one of the quieter times for the swimming facility.
“We have looked at a number of options including keeping the centre partly open but in terms of first priority being public safety and our patrons’ safety, I think the safest option is mostly likely to be closing the centre partly or fully during the construction,” he said.
After the roof is done, further upgrading work might take three to five years and is yet to be funded.
Council documents show visitor numbers for the year are down.
In February, despite the summer heat, the number of casual swimmers was down by 1,811 on the same month of the year before.
The swimming centre is under budget by about $97,000 for the financial year.
Marion move
Construction has started in Adelaide’s south on a new state swimming centre near Marion shopping centre.
The $100 million project will give elite swimmers a new place to train.
It is due to open in the second half of the year.
General manager of Swimming SA Craig Hobart says it started lobbying the South Australian Government back in late 1990s to either renovate the Adelaide Aquatic Centre to international standard or build a new centre.
“We’re still seeing the bleed of athletes out of the state now … just because of the fact we don’t have a swimming pool that has been able to maintain and attract swimmers to South Australia,” he said.
“[On] the designs that I’ve seen it does rival and will be the best aquatic centre in Australia, rivalling the Sydney Olympic Centre.”
North Adelaide’s Aquatic Centre opened in 1969.
Before that swimmers flocked to the city baths in King William Road, now the site of the Festival Theatre.
Mr Hobart says about 800,000 people visited the North Adelaide facility last year.
A 41-year-old Melbourne man arrested for procuring a child for sex over the internet has been refused bail.
The Adelaide Magistrates Court heard the man had been communicating with a girl he thought was 13 for the past three weeks.
It is alleged he contacted the girl through an internet chat room and sent text messages and made phone calls to an undercover police officer he thought was the girl.
The court heard he set up a web camera and filmed himself masturbating, and encouraged the girl to engage in sexual activity.
It is alleged the accused arranged to meet the girl and travelled from Melbourne to a motel at Enfield where he was arrested by police.
The court heard the man lives with his mother in Victoria, although she denies his claims that he is her full-time carer.
The man will return to court in June.
Detective chief inspector Damien Powell says police are actively looking on the internet for predators, but parents should continue to be mindful of the risks.
“It highlights the fact that you don’t know who you’re talking to or where they are or even that the story they give you at any point in time can actually be factual,” he said.
“So from a prevention point of view, we would say to children and even adults don’t give out information over the internet, your personal information about yourself, your family or your friends to a person you don’t actually know.”
Adelaide’s rainfall in the past day has been the heaviest in three years.
The city recorded nearly 33 millimetres until 9:00am and 43mm at Adelaide Airport.
Crafers West in the Adelaide hills had more than 70mm of rainfall.
Many suburbs had power outages and there was widespread minor flooding across the suburbs.
Vince Rowlands from the weather bureau says it is a long time since the city has had such a downpour.
“The last time we had anything about the 33 millimetres at Kent Town was on the 27th of April in 2007 when we had 39 millimetres fall in the city on that particular day,” he said.
The State Emergency Service says it has had hundreds of call-outs to deal with flooding.
Wet roads were blamed for a crash in the Adelaide hills which put two people in hospital, one in a critical condition.
Police think the driver lost control on a bend of the Mount Torrens-Tungkillo Road, at about 10:00am.
The man,36, has serious head and chest injuries and a woman passenger, 25, has critical head injuries.
Both were airlifted to the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
The District Court has jailed a woman who was caught with drugs at Adelaide Airport.
Leanne Elizabeth Gray, 34, was caught with nearly 10 kilograms of dried cannabis in her luggage last April.
The court heard Gray was to be paid $2,000 to carry the drugs to Sydney.
Judge Paul Cuthbertson sentenced her to five years in prison with a non-parole term of two years and three months.
Adelaide Magistrates Court has been told that a man accused of shooting dead his uncle last November was captured on a surveillance tape going to the murder scene.
The court heard Allan Ames, 68, was shot once in the head at his workshop at Cavan.
It was alleged camera footage from across the road showed that his nephew Daniel Troy Ames, 36, spent more than two hours at the workshop on the night of the shooting.
Ames allegedly told police he was at the workshop for 25 minutes and that his uncle was alive when he left.
The court also heard police found a large quantity of drugs at Daniel Ames’s house and that his friend had retracted a false alibi.
Ames was refused home detention bail despite a friend offering to lodge a $5,000 surety.
A teenager has admitted stabbing to death a Sudanese boy in Grenfell Street in Adelaide.
The 15-year-old was due to go on trial in the Supreme Court charged with murder but has instead pleaded guilty.
He was accused of stabbing Daniel Thongyang Awak in the chest in November 2008 after buying a knife at a shop in nearby King William Street.
Prosecutors had told the Youth Court the teenager picked up a set of knives then asked for something bigger.
It was alleged Awak pulled the knife out of his chest and chased his attacker but then collapsed and died.
In revenge, Awak’s friend slashed the 15-year-old attacker and assaulted him.
The 15-year-old will face court again next month for sentencing submissions.
The death of two jumps horses trained at Warrnambool, in western Victoria, is not expected to affect the launch of this year’s season.
Ciaron Maher’s horses, Satu San and Marc of Thunder, died after colliding during a race at South Australia’s Oakbank carnival yesterday.
John Glatz, the chairman of the Oakbank Racing Club chairman, says it was a freak accident.
He says Marc of Thunder made the jump and then faltered.
“I thought obviously it’s hurt itself and most of the field just moved out and went around it, and Satu San just appeared to run straight into the back of Marc of Thunder,” he said.
The jumps season will be officially launched today in Warrnambool.
But the first races will not be run until later this month, because of problems importing new brushes for the hurdles from overseas.
The chair of the Warrnambool Racing Club, Margaret Lucas says the new hurdles will force the horses to slow down more before they jump.
The industry was put on notice last year after a number of deaths, but Ms Lucas says the sport will rebound.
“Jumps racing worldwide has an enormous following and it’s going from strength to strength in other countries,” she said.
“I think if we get over this hurdle and excuse the pun, that we will move on next year.”
Ciaron Maher’s father, horse trainer John Maher, says the sport will meet conditions imposed this season to include more starters in each race.
“Speaking from my son’s stable only, we have them queuing up to get into the stable,” he said.
Mitch Williams has been elected unopposed as the Liberal Party’s new deputy leader in South Australia.
It was the second time since the March 20 election that a new deputy was chosen by the defeated Liberals.
Former opposition leader Martin Hamilton-Smith took the deputy’s job last week but was not leader Isobel Redmond’s choice for the position.
So the opposition met again to consider the deputy leadership and Mr Hamilton-Smith stood aside.
Today’s party room meeting took five proxy votes, including one from Mr Hamilton-Smith and another from Vickie Chapman.
Ms Redmond was pleased with the latest decision, saying she rejected the previous vote for deputy because a factional deal had been done to install Mr Hamilton-Smith.
“I hope that he doesn’t take it as an insult because it’s not that I have no faith in Martin’s capacity, I simply object to closed-room deals that are factional-based,” she said.
“I have always stood against factionalism within this party.
“I have always had a very strong view that the only way forward for this parliamentary party is not to be in any faction other than the ‘get rid of the Labor government faction’.”
Mr Williams only got three votes when he put his hand up for the deputy’s job last week so the latest outcome was quite a contrast.
“I accept what happened last week just as I accept what happened today and look can I say I am somewhat humbled but very proud of where I find myself today and I am really excited about being able to support Isobel who in my mind is the best leader this party’s had since Tom Playford.”
Ms Redmond conceded the Liberals had gone backwards since polling day in SA.
“Look I’d have to concede that I believe over the last couple of weeks we’ve lost some of the momentum certainly that was going our way,” she said.
“But, that said, I believe we now have the best possibility in terms of the leadership and the way we’ll move forward and we have over 200 weeks until the next election to show the people of South Australia we do have the tenacity and unity to govern this state.”
Mr Hamilton-Smith is far from pleased with events of recent days.
“I think the events of the last week have been unedifying, I think they have been unprofessional,” he said.
Thousands of houses in Adelaide, the mid-north and lower Flinders Ranges of South Australia have been without power because of rain and thunderstorms.
Worst-affected areas have included Peterborough, Booleroo Centre, Wirrabara and Adelaide’s north, east and west.
ETSA says crews have been working to restore supplies across a wide area.
In Adelaide, more than 7,500 properties in the northern and western suburbs have been without electricity, including thousands in the Woodville area and some at West Lakes.
On the west coast of the state, an outage affected hundreds of homes at Streaky Bay.
Craig Bassington from the State Emergency Service says there have been numerous call-outs to deal with minor flooding and fallen trees.
“Majority of these are water entering, the rain entering through the house,” he said.
“The gutters are blocked by the quantity of water and it’s coming back in under the roof line.”
Crafers West in the Adelaide hills had more than 70 millimetres of rain and the city had more than 30mm overnight and on Tuesday morning.
South Australia’s Racing Minister Michael Wright has ruled out banning jumps racing in response to the deaths of two horses at the Oakbank Easter race meeting on Monday.
The horses crashed into each other on a flat section of the track in the Adelaide hills.
Anti-jumps racing campaigner Colin Thomas fears more horses will die unless the sport is banned.
“It makes us very determined to make sure the nail is very much in the coffin of jumps racing in South Australia,” he said.
But Mr Wright says the SA Government supports jumps racing.
“Although it’s extremely disappointing that we’ve had the loss that we’ve had, it doesn’t mean that jumps racing should be banned as a result of one incident,” he said.
The Patrick Payne-trained It’s A Dud proved anything but as it took out the $160,000 Great Eastern Steeplechase.
Mitch Williams is the only confirmed candidate for the Liberal deputy leadership in South Australia after the withdrawal of current deputy Martin Hamilton-Smith.
It is the second deputy leadership spill in just over a week.
Leader Isobel Redmond did not get her choice of deputy when the party chose Mr Hamilton-Smith last week.
Mr Hamilton-Smith now says it is beneath his dignity to stand again, leaving Mr Williams as the only contender.
“If nobody else nominates I will take that as a very strong, if not unanimous, endorsement for myself as deputy leader,” he said.
“I did get a voicemail message from Martin yesterday afternoon to say that he wished to let me know that he’d taken the decision that he wouldn’t contest the leadership.
“Certainly I’ll be putting my hand up or standing in my position. Whether anybody else is going to contest the deputy leadership, I do not know.”
Labor frontbencher Michael Wright says the Liberals face ongoing instability.
“The leader, Isobel Redmond, didn’t get her way the first time round. We’ll just have to wait and see what comes about the second time round,” he said.
Ms Redmond’s earlier choice for the deputy’s job, Iain Evans, says he will not run again even though Mr Hamilton-Smith is standing down.
Police say the driver who died in a crash on the outskirts of Adelaide’s CBD early this morning became an unnecessary statistic.
The 29-year-old driver died when he lost control of his Mazda sedan and hit a tree on Sir Donald Bradman Drive, near West Terrace, at about 3:00am (ACST).
Sergeant Stephen Murray from the Major Crash unit says the driver had been drinking and was speeding.
“The impact with the tree speaks for itself, the car has significant damage as a result of the collision and as I said, preliminary investigations indicate that speed was a contributing factor,” he said.
A passenger in his 20s was critically injured and is being treated at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
Three people have died on South Australian roads this Easter, bringing the national toll to 13.
Adelaide coach Neil Craig admits he does not know how long it will take his side to snap a slump that threatens to derail its AFL season after only two rounds.
The Crows, finalists in each of their previous five seasons under Craig, and who entered this season with top-four ambitions, were thumped 18.10 (118) to 11.9 (75) by Sydney at Football Park on Sunday.
It followed their shock 56-point opening round belting by Fremantle, giving them consecutive defeats to start a season for the first time since 2004, the year Craig’s predecessor Gary Ayres lost his job.
Sunday’s loss was also their first to the Swans since 2004, breaking a six-game streak.
The Crows, who have been hit hard by injury, fielded underdone players against Sydney, including forwards Jason Porplyzia and Brett Burton plus ruckmen Ivan Maric and James Sellar, and it showed.
Porplyzia and Burton were hardly sighted after half-time, while Sellar strained a hamstring, meaning Jon Griffin can expect a recall despite his non-competitive showing against the Dockers.
Craig said it could be a long process until his side finds the flow that carried it into the second week of the 2009 finals.
“It might be a month of footy, a month or more of footy to get those guys in good shape, because what happens now is during the season of course, you’ve got to be careful how much you train them versus the recovery they need.
“That ended up being an exhausting game for our footy club the way guys started to drop off.
“So they’ll need more recovery than conditioning this week, and yet what you’re asking for is to be a better conditioned athlete.”
He also questioned his team’s attitude.
“The football public will put up with a lot of things, but what they do want to see is their team compete to the best of their ability,” Craig said.
“What they would’ve seen today were some patches of that, but… nowhere near long enough.”
Sydney had encouraging contributions from its numerous experienced recruits.
Former Hawthorn players Ben McGlynn (five goals) and Josh Kennedy (two) were important, as were former Brisbane spearhead Daniel Bradshaw (two) and ex-West Coast big man Mark Seaby (two), who also controlled the ruck.
Four people have been arrested after fleeing police in south-west Adelaide.
A police helicopter and the dog squad was used to find the offenders, who ran off after being pursued by police for allegedly driving a stolen car and committing traffic offences.
They were found in the suburb of Sturt.
Police are looking for the parents of a one-year-old girl who was found locked in a stolen car in Adelaide’s CBD about midnight (ACDT) Friday.
A security officer saw the girl in the car parked on North Terrace in the city and called police.
The child was taken to the Women’s and Children’s Hospital and police say she is well.
They say the car and its number plates are both reported as stolen, and are asking for anyone with information to contact them.
Police are urging motorcyclists to tone down their Easter celebrations, with four of the six deaths on Australia’s roads so far this long weekend involving motorbikes.
Another fatal motorcycle crash in Victoria has brought the state’s road toll to three and the national road toll to six.
Two men died in Victoria yesterday when their bikes collided head-on near Shepparton in the state’s central region.
Meanwhile, a motorcyclist was killed in the ACT when his bike ran off the road and down an embankment.
Assistant Commissioner John Hartley, the head of traffic services at New South Wales Police, is urging motorcyclists not to drink at all if they are on the road this long weekend.
“They are still under the limit, but this can affect their balance,” he said.
“So I’d be encouraging motorcyclists not to drink at all if they’re going to ride their motorbikes.”
South Australia recorded its first Easter road death in two years on Friday afternoon when a car rolled off a road north of Adelaide, killing a woman.
In New South Wales, an 86-year-old woman died when the ute she was travelling in hit a station wagon at Wollongong on the state’s south coast.
On Thursday afternoon a 56-year-old pedestrian was hit by a car in the Perth suburb of Victoria Park.
The 85-year-old driver is unlikely to be charged over the woman’s death.
Western Australia has not recorded any road deaths since the official start of the long weekend on Friday.
Queensland, Tasmania and the Northern Territory also remain fatality free.
Adelaide City Council says a city parking station now has spaces where electric cars and powered wheelchairs can recharge.
That parking station was chosen because it has solar roof panels.
The idea was proposed by an electric car enthusiast, Bruce White, who thinks it will be of great benefit.
“For me, I live down at the beach, I normally can come in and out of the city once. If I want to do a bit more running around this gives me more flexibility so it’s a great tool,” he said.
Councillor Stephen Yarwood says more electric cars would change the face of Adelaide.
“You have cleaner air, you have less oil dropping onto the roads, you have quieter streets, you might even hear the birds sing,” he said.
The recharging points are in the Grote Street U-Park and can be used for just the normal cost of city parking.
A Mount Gambier man has been found guilty of helping plot his mother’s murder, three years ago.
Matthew Heyward, 22, has been taken into custody at the South Australian Supreme Court at Mount Gambier after the jury returned a unanimous verdict.
His co-accused, farm worker Jeremy Minter, 28, has also been found guilty of murder.
It was alleged the plot to murder Glenys Heyward was masterminded by her ex-partner Neil Heyward because of a $6 million property dispute.
Neil Heyward killed himself last year while in custody.
Matthew Heyward appeared shocked as the verdict was given and fought back tears.
As he was led from the courtroom, he waved to someone in the public gallery.
Glenys Heyward’s family and supporters in the gallery cried during proceedings and there were gasps as the verdicts were announced.
Jeremy Minter barely reacted as his guilty verdict was given, but his face gave a slight twitch.
Outside court, an emotional Richard Childs said it had been extremely hard to sit through the trial into his sister’s killing.
“There’s really no winners is there. It didn’t bring Glenys back. We’re happy with the decision, it’s been a long time. It’s been two years and eight months,” he said.
“But there’s been a lot of work put in by all the police. They’ve just been absolutely fantastic.”
Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Pallaras said it was a tragic case.
“It’s been a long and a difficult case and it just shows I think that there are never any winners,” he said.
“Two young men who were the accused have now lost a good part of their future and of course the family have suffered terribly.”
Premier Mike Rann says it remains to be seen whether he will lead the ALP into the South Australian election in 2014.
Mr Rann has given a commitment to serve a four-year term but no such commitment to being leader by polling day.
He says it will be something to discuss with his colleagues.
“I said … before the election that I will lead the government into this election and serve the full four-year term and that’s exactly what I intend to do and obviously we’ll make other decisions about the future at a later stage,” he said.
Despite a statewide swing of more than 7 per cent against Labor at this month’s SA election, Mr Rann’s Government has been returned for a third term with its parliamentary majority cut by just two seats.
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