One jailed, three free on Nightingale death

KIM WATERS
A MAN who fatally shot Corio father Brock Nightingale will spend up to 11 years in jail, a judge ruled this week.
But three other men involved in the shooting walked free from the Supreme Court on Wednesday with suspended sentences.
Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Curtain sentenced Bell Post Hill’s Mehmet Nurdag, 26, to a minimum eight and a half years before parole after he pleaded guilty to shooting Mr Nightingale outside his Cloverdale Drive home in 2009.
Justice Curtain released co-accused Jayden Bishop, 22, Matthew Grotheer, 30 and David Puglia, 31, after they pleaded guilty to assisting an offender.
She took time already served in custody off their two-year suspended sentences.
Justice Curtain told the court Mr Nightingale died after the four accused went to his house to recover $40,000 he owed Bishop and Puglia from a staged drug bust.
Justice Curtain said Puglia and Bishop gave Mr Nightingale the money to buy ecstasy tablets but he told them he lost the cash when fleeing a police raid on the drug deal.
Police believed that six shots fired into Mr Nightingale’s home the next day were linked to the drug deal rip-off, she said.
Justice Curtain said Bishop and Puglia had initially agreed to take a speedboat as repayment. But Nurdag shot Nightingale when the men went to his house on October 24 to retrive the cash.
Justice Curtain said Mr Nightingale fired back with a shotgun, hitting Puglia in the buttock but dying soon after from blood loss.
Victim statements from Mr Nightingale’s family spoke of “grief, anguish and pain”.
“No sentence I impose can restore to them their loved one.”
Justice Curtain took into account the accused men’s remorse and guilty pleas.
She called the case a “stark reminder that the drug culture is fraught with danger”.
“Involvement in the drug culture can and does have catastrophic consequences.”
Family of the accused men clapped as Justice Curtain handed down the final suspended sentence and later embraced outside the court.