A man who resisted giving police permission to take a mouth swab and is suspected of stabbing five people during a rampage across Melbourne will now have to provide his DNA.
The 31-year-old Christopher Raftopoulos left his prior attorney mid-hearing a week ago, and he appeared in Melbourne Magistrates Court today via video link from prison with a new one.
“You have imprisoned me for protecting every planet in the solar system,” he told the court before being muffled for the brief session.
When Raftopoulos was taken into custody on January 7, following an alleged unprovoked stabbing spree in Melbourne’s inner suburbs, he exhibited with symptoms of catatonic schizophrenia.
After reportedly stabbing five people in four separate attacks over the course of three hours on January 6 and 7, at Southbank, the CBD, and St Kilda, he is being charged with fifteen counts, including deliberately inflicting injury.
Raftopoulos refused to allow a swab to be taken, so the prosecution requested that the court force him to submit to an obligatory forensic procedure in order to get his DNA.
“The type of compulsory procedure sought is a buccal swab of the mouth, for the purposes of obtaining a DNA sample to compare with the DNA profile from a knife that was seized,” the prosecutor told the jury.
Daniel Thompson, Raftopoulos’s new attorney, stated that although his client had informed him he would not consent to the treatment, he did not object to the application.
Raftopoulos was considered a suspect based on CCTV, according to Magistrate Kieran Gilligan, and the DNA sample “may confirm or disprove” his involvement in the crime.
He gave the go-ahead for police to collect the accused stabber’s DNA sample and threatened to use force if necessary to carry out the procedure.
“The respondent has refused to give consent to the request or is incapable of giving reasonable consent by way of mental impairment,” Gilligan stated.
In a prior hearing, Raftopoulos fired Michael Amad, his previous attorney, telling the judge, “This lawyer is not my lawyer; I want to represent myself.”
He also indicated that he would file for bail, albeit as of right now, nothing has been listed.
He will be back in court on February 12 and is still being held in a prison mental health unit.
