The harrowing news of 17-year-old Melbourne schoolgirl Masa Vukotic’s death has shocked the nation this week, as details on her senseless murder have emerged.
On Tuesday evening, Masa Vukotic was killed in a park less than a kilometre from her home – her body was found with stab wounds. On Thursday, a man handed himself in over the murder at Sunshine police, and on Friday, police named the alleged killer as 31-year-old Albion man Sean Price.
Today, further details on Sean Price have emerged, as Fairfax reports that Sean Price punched Prime Minister Tony Abbott—then Health Minister—in the face nine years ago, in 2006.
At a visit to the Thomas Embling Hospital in February 2006, Abbott was reportedly hit twice by Sean Price.
Details of the incident were revealed in a chilling interview last week with investigative reporter Michael Bachelard of The Age. In the interview, Price allegedly admitted to assaulting Tony Abbott, saying, “I hit him and he stepped back and shaped up like a boxer.”
“Then he dropped his hands and smiled, and said, ‘I’ve been hit harder than that on the football field.’”
The incident had given Price “new respect” for the Prime Minister, according to Bachelard.
At the time, a spokesperson for Tony Abbott downplayed the incident, saying, “to say he punched him is overstating it.”
In a piece for Fairfax yesterday, Michael Bachelard reflected on meeting Price a week before he would commit murder and a range of other offences. He wrote:
“Did he look like a man who might stab a girl in a park at random as she went for an evening stroll? No, but what does such a man look like?”
Via SMH.
