A Black Saturday bushfires survivor has walked free from court after bashing a young mum’s head in with an iron bar after a generous thank you present turned sour.
Madison Gentsch, 28, viciously assaulted her former friend just weeks after she gave the woman her Ford Falcon as a thank you for letting her stay in her home.
Their relationship soured when the woman advertised the attached personalised numberplates ‘EATZWA’ – an eshay term for ‘sweet’ or ‘thank you’ – for $10,000 on Facebook Marketplace.
Gentsch was then asked to leave the property in Frankston, southeast Melbourne, due to an ‘ongoing conflict’ over the numberplates.
She then planned a violent ambush to get the car back, and the subsequent assault left the young mother bleeding in a gutter outside an IGA supermarket on June 27 last year.
An associate of Gentsch arranged to purchase the numberplates, and to meet outside the IGA on Beach Street in Frankston.
When the woman arrived in the Falcon, she was ambushed and violently beaten.
Gentsch, accompanied by a male accomplice, sprang from a black SUV and attacked her former friend and a male passenger with an iron bar.
Melbourne woman Madison Gentsch (pictured) ‘planned’ a vicious assault on a former friend after she changed her mind after gifting the woman a Ford Falcon as a thank you gift
She clobbered the woman in the head several times and attempted to pull her out of the car by her hair before finally gaining access to the car.
In a final act of violence, Gentsch slammed the car door on the woman’s legs three times before she drove away and left her in the gutter.
Her male accomplice drove the black SUV from the scene.
Witnesses called the police, and the victim was rushed to hospital with multiple head injuries.
Bodycam footage from a responding officer showing the woman bleeding and groaning on the concrete was played to the court on Wednesday.
Gentsch and the man hightailed it to the Gold Coast but were stopped by police as they approached Surfers Paradise in the Falcon.
Gentsch (pictured) attacked the woman with an iron bar after she was kicked out of her Frankston home due to ‘ongoing conflict’, a court was told on Wednesday
Gentsch and a male associate were arrested by police at the Gold Coast after immediately leaving Victoria following the assault.
Gentsch and the man were extradited back to Victoria on August 8.
Police asked Gentsch if she had known the woman would be leaving her house prior to the assault.
‘She told some c**t she would be there at the meet spot to f**kin sell her plates,’ Gentsch told officers.
That gave her the ‘green light’ to ‘get what’s hers’.
The court was told Gentsch ‘would not disclose whose car she was in or who she was with’ because they would ‘f**kin kill (me)’.
She claimed the man who arrived with her former friend in the Ford Falcon had face tattoos and an extendible baton.
In a victim impact statement read to the court on Wednesday, the victim said Gentsch ‘destroyed her passion to help others’.
‘I still live in fear that they will come and attack me again,’ she said.
‘I have struggled every day since the attack… I am nervous and on edge… I would rather be in my room which is my safe zone than spend time with my children.
‘Since the attack I don’t see life like I use to… I suffer from nightmares.’
The victim said the assault had ‘destroyed my passion for helping others’ and that she lives in fear Gentsch (pictured) and her male accomplice will attack her again
Gentsch, who now has tattoos on her neck and face, is unemployed and receives a fortnightly Carer Allowance.
Her family survived the 2009 Black Saturday fires at King Lake when Gentsch was just a child, the court heard.
Judge Richard Maidment described the attack as a ‘vicious assault’ on someone that had shown ‘considerable kindness’.
‘It is a serious incident of its kind,’ Judge Maidment told the court.
‘One that deserves not just serious punishment of you but also punishment that has capacity to deter others from committing offences (and) taking the law into their own hands in the way you did.
‘This was planned by you, you involved others in it and you carried out a quiet viscous assault on a person who had showed you considerable kindness although… you may have felt upset being ejected from the house.’
Gentsch pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two months imprisonment at the Melbourne County Court on Wednesday.
Having been held in remand for 107 days, she was immediately released onto an 18-month community correction order.
