A father and son are bracing for the prospect of a long stint behind bars for murdering a 19-year-old man, who has been remembered as “everybody’s best friend”.
Jesse Thompson, 19, was in the back seat of an SUV when he was fatally shot on the streets of Wyong, on the NSW Central Coast, in 2017.
At the time, the SUV was embroiled in a high-speed pursuit with a ute driven by John Paul Evans, 57, with his son Keith Evans, 31, occupying the front passenger seat.
It came after one of Mr Thompson’s friends was assaulted for sleeping with Keith Evans’ girlfriend, a jury was told.
In retaliation, two men arrived at the Evans family home, making threats and smashing the glass front door.
The Evans men and a young woman who cannot be identified then piled into a ute for a high-speed car chase that turned deadly.
The duo were found guilty of murdering Mr Thompson in 2021 and sentenced to more than three decades in prison.
But the conviction was tossed for legal reasons in 2024, triggering a second jury trial and a second round of guilty verdicts, which were delivered in July.
The father and son will again stare down the barrel of a long jail term when they are sentenced for a second time on Tuesday afternoon.
Justice Richard Weinstein has been asked to take into consideration the lives John and Keith Evans ruined when they murdered Mr Thompson.
“He was everybody’s best friend,” his brother Caleb told a hearing earlier in September, calling for an example to be set in sentencing the killers.
“He would never want to hurt anyone.”
Mr Thompson’s partner Hanna Andersen said she would never forgive the men who stole his life, delivering her and her family “the harshest life sentence possible”.
“His life was treated like some sort of game,” she said.
“He was hunted down and left to die like he was some kind of animal, all while his killers continued on that day like nothing happened.”
The cowardly act of revenge had nothing to do with Mr Thompson and yet he paid the ultimate price, the court was previously told.
The third person in the ute – a 25-year-old woman who cannot be identified because she was 17 at the time – has been jailed for more than 14 years after pleading guilty to Mr Thompson’s murder.
