Darren Dean, a plain clothes criminal investigator with the Echuca Police, recently made an engaging presentation to the Year 11 Unit 1 Legal Studies students, focussing on a road rage shooting incident some years ago, which involved a ‘who’s who’ of the ‘Underbelly Carlton Crew’ including Carl Williams, Rocco Arico, Dino Dibra and Vince Gangitano. Darren told us he led the investigation from start to finish and shared the investigative process with the group which was incredibly interesting, if just a little gruesome, with shots of the impact of bullets on the body (alive I am pleased to report) amongst the many pieces of evidence gathered. The role of the forensic crime scene investigators was also explained. Given that Rocco Arico was recently incarcerated again with the probability of deportation at the end of his sentence and labelled as the new head of organized crime in Melbourne, the presentation was all the more riveting. Darren also spoke of his responsibilities in Echuca and the scourge of our district, the saturation of ‘ice’ on the illicit drug trade and its impact on crime.
We are ever grateful to people such as Darren who give up their valuable spare time to enrich the learning experiences of our students. We are already looking forward to more such immersions into the criminal justice system in the future.
