ZAIDA GLIBANOVIC
By ZAIDA GLIBANOVIC
ANDREW Price and Jake Brown will be eligible for parole in less than three years of their seven-year sentences for the manslaughter of Jarrad Lovison.
Price, 50, and Brown, 31, returned to the Victorian Supreme Court last Thursday (June 22) to be handed out their jail sentences.
Price was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in jail with a four-and-a-half-year non-parole period in the Melbourne Supreme Court.
He has already served 586 days of his sentence in custody, and will be available for release in two years and 11 months.
Brown’s involvement was judged minor, and he was sentenced to seven years in prison with a four-year non-parole term.
He has completed 679 days of his sentence, and will be available for parole in two-and-a-half years next month.
The two men were previously accused of murdering 37-year-old Moe man, Jarrad Lovison, in Moondara bush land. Both charges for the two men were downgraded in April after it was conceded they didn’t intend for him to die. Instead, lawyers acting for the two men submitted that they wanted to “teach him a lesson”.
Under the premise of a hook-up, Samantha Guillerme, who had been having an affair with Brown, lured Mr Lovison to a remote location along Moe-Walhalla Road in the early hours of April 16, 2020. Lovison rode out to the location on his large green mountain bike. As Gullierme and Mr Lovison smoked cigarettes together in a vehicle, he had no idea that Brown and Price lied in wait with firearms in hand.
The court heard the men approached the car wearing head torches and wielding weapons, and began shouting at Lovison before asking Guillerme to drive to Tanjil Bren Rd in the Moondarra state park.
They exited, taking Lovison with them, and proceeded 25 metres into the thick bush, forcing him to consume a large dose of the drug GHB and leaving him there to die. He was reported missing seven days after, but it wasn’t until a month later that his body was discovered.
Price, Brown and Guillerme were arrested and charged with murder in October 2020.
Gullierme struck a deal last year by giving additional evidence on Price and Brown in exchange for a reduced sentence of three-and-a-half years.
She is now eligible for parole.
In the presentence trial hearing, the court was told how conflict developed between Price and Mr Lovison after Price began a relationship with Mr Lovison’s long-term on-and-off again partner Angela O’Brien. The court was told it was Ms O’Brien and Lovison’s relationship and Price’s jealousy which was the motive for the crime.
It was an emotional sentencing. The Supreme Court justice Michael Croucher allegedly held back tears as he told the court the sentence enforced did not reflect the value of Mr Lovison’s life.
“I wish to add this, I know there’s nothing this court can say or do to lessen the grief suffered by Mr Lovison’s loved ones. It must be awful,” Justice Croucher said.
“The sentences to be imposed are not a reflection of his life,” he added.
During their pre-sentence plea hearing, Mr Lovison’s father, John described the pair as “gutless dogs”.
“We don’t understand how you two could have been bailed for this planned, premeditated serious crime but our justice system is a joke,” he said.
“You just walked away and went back to your home, your lives, your kids after killing ours.”
The Court Justice Croucher told the court he had hopes for the rehabilitation of Price and Brown given their guilty plea and drug free, and already making alleged progress since they were arrested.
