‘Menace’ jailed for violent stabbing of complete stranger in Queen St Mall suffers massive blow in appeal of ‘unreasonable’ verdict

A “menace” who tried to murder a complete stranger – stabbing him in the neck as he slept in a popular tourist strip mall and leaving him to die – has suffered a massive court blow in his fight to overturn the “unreasonable” verdict. Anthony Daniel Rajek is serving a 13.5-year jail term for the attempted murder of Steven Robert Cribb, then 53, in January 2022 after a jury found him guilty in late 2023. Details of Rajek’s horrific act are laid bare in a recent Court of Appeal judgment where Rajek attempted to overturn his conviction – arguing the jury’s verdict could not be supported having regard to the evidence. Mr Cribb was sleeping rough in Brisbane’s Queen St Mall – in the heart of the CBD – when Rajek, then 21, approached him about 3.40am on January 16, 2022. The men did not know one another. Mr Cribb described Rajek pulling him over and stabbing him in a “quite forceful” manner with a 35cm knife, saying nothing and walking away. “The complainant felt pain at the top of his chest. His hand, which he placed on the wound, was covered in blood,” the Court of Appeal judgment states. After stumbling over to the nearby McDonald’s, 30m from where he was stabbed, Mr Cribb asked them to call an ambulance. The manager of the restaurant – who gave evidence during the trial – described seeing Mr Cribb open his jacket and reveal a “gushing” wound in his chest. He was saved after the manager and a nurse applied pressure to his chest area for 10-15 minutes until paramedics arrived. Rajek was identified on CCTV cameras approaching Mr Cribb in the mall and was tracked to an address in Margaret St. “A still photograph of the appellant depicted him wearing white shoes, dark pants, a dark zip-up jacket, a white hoodie with the hoodie over his head, and a face mask,” the Court of Appeal judgment states. “Other still photographs tendered in evidence showed the appellant en route between his address and where the offending occurred.” The knife, which had a 20cm blade, was located in Rajek’s apartment. During a 2023 sentencing hearing, Rajek was described as a “menace to the community” by Supreme Court Justice Peter Callaghan, who questioned whether he would ever be suitable to be released back into society. Justice Callaghan said he could not push for a higher jail term to sentencing regulations on the charge of attempted murder. He ultimately sentenced Rajek to 13 years and six months’ jail, ordering him to serve 80 per cent of the sentence. In his appeal, Rajek submitted the evidence in the Crown case was not capable of excluding the reasonable hypothesis that he had held an intention to do grievous bodily harm, but not to kill. He relied on several features – including how he did not aim for a vital organ, did not speak during the offending and how he did not try to deliver further blows to ensure the complainant was killed. In their full judgment, Chief Justice Helen Bowskill and Justices Robert Gotterson and Catherine Muir dismissed Rajek’s appeal. They noted the CCTV footage played to the jury showed Mr Cribb lying outside the Telstra shop as Rajek walks past, turning his head. There was no conversation between them or any other form of interchange. “Shortly after this, the complainant rolls over, so that he now has his back to passing foot traffic,” the judgment states. “The appellant circles back towards the complainant and walks directly to him. “The complainant, who was facing away from the appellant, could not have seen the latter approaching.” All three justices said the jury could “reasonably infer” Rajek’s conduct was deliberative and controlled as he proceeded to lean over Mr Cribb, before withdrawing the knife and “thrust(ing) it towards the complainant’s upper chest and lower neck area with a full swing of his right arm”. “On that evidence, the jury would have justifiably inferred that the appellant intended to pierce the complainant’s body in that area with a knife blade and to do so with substantial force,” the judgment states. “The risk to life of a wound that severs the neck area is a matter of common knowledge of which the jury would reasonably have assumed the appellant was aware.” “As the appellant well knew, he had struck the complainant in the vulnerable neck area with real force; the knife blade had pierced the skin; and it had gone a considerable distance into the complainant’s neck. “It was not, of course, necessary that the appellant have killed the complainant in order to have had an intention to kill him.”