Dump-and-dash killer Riley Jordan has been sentenced to eight years in prison for the manslaughter of roommate Daniel Cockerill last year.
The 42-year-old was charged after dumping the 45-year-old Port Melbourne chef outside a Melbourne hospital with a 5.3cm stab wound to the heart in March last year.
Delivering his sentencing remarks in the Supreme Court on Monday, Justice James Elliott noted that Jordan would have served 10 years if not for his decision to plead guilty last month.
Daniel Cockerill died outside Casey Hospital on March 26. Picture: Supplied
Other mitigating factors, he found, included Jordan’s long history of mental illness and the decision to take a critically injured Mr Cockerill to the hospital in Melbourne’s east.
Adding that Mr Cockerill “was loved by each of his cousins who regarded him as less of a cousin and more of a brother”, Justice Elliot told Jordan their pain was a reminder of the “grief and suffering … caused by the offence in which you are complicit”.
Jordan was caught dumping a dying Mr Cockerill at Casey Hospital about 7.30pm on March 26 in a maroon Volvo sedan belonging to his victim’s associate.
The court was told the pair had been drinking earlier with Ayant Singh, who knew Jordan for several years and was in the back seat when Mr Cockerill was dumped.
Mr Singh was not involved in any wrongdoing and was released after questioning.
CCTV from a nearby Coles Express petrol station showed all three men alive in the car earlier that night. The precise circumstances of the stabbing remain unknown.
Jordan – a paranoid schizophrenic – still refuses to acknowledge that Mr Cockerill died from the stab wounds identified by the autopsy as the cause of death, instead insisting that he died from a drug injection.
A maroon Volvo sedan loaned to Mr Cockerill was used by his killer to dump him at the hospital. Picture: Victoria Police
Forensic analysis conducted on the sedan after Jordan’s arrest found a pyrex kitchen knife and a sheet, with analysis revealing a match for Mr Cockerill’s DNA on the blade and Jordan’s on the handle.
A lifelong user of cannabis who had “more recently used meth once a month”, Jordan had been involuntarily admitted to psychiatric institutions three times since his diagnosis in 2014, the court was told, and suffered “longstanding delusions of being drugged and sexually assaulted”.
Jordan previously served a six-month sentence in prison for assaulting a police officer in 2021.
While he was treated with antipsychotic medication during his time in prison, Jordan ceased treatment after his release, Justice Elliott said.
“As a consequence, you were untreated in the period between your release and the time of the offence,” the judge said.
In a report submitted to the court, a psychiatrist found “it was not possible to determine if you were mentally ill at the time of the offence but concluded it was very likely you were psychotic at the time”.
While Justice Elliott acknowledged that Jordan’s “moral culpability was materially less” as a result of his psychosis, he added that his lack of awareness of his own mental illness and the long history of previous offences were “relevant to his prospects for rehabilitation”.
Mr Cockerill’s family attended the sentencing, staring blankly through Jordan as he walked past them to enter the courtroom.
Jordan was sentenced to eight years and six months in prison with a minimum of five years and three months without parole.