Sharp, 22, trembled in the dock at the Supreme Court on Monday as Justice Phillip Priest delivered his fate while Sharp’s family wept in the public gallery.

Mr Starling’s body was found on his friend’s front lawn at Jonathan Drive, Darley, after an altercation with Sharp in the early hours of June 8, 2013.

In fixing a non-parole period of four years, Justice Priest said it would be unjustifiably cynical to describe Sharp’s rehabilitation prospects as beyond reclamation. 

“It is disturbing, however, that you were convicted for assault just three weeks before the fatal attack on Mr Starling,” he said.

The court heard Sharp was three weeks into a community corrections order and was on bail for armed robbery and theft offences when he killed Mr Starling.

Justice Priest said a “particularly unpleasant” incident in 2011, where Sharp wrung a pet rabbit’s neck and threw it against a bus shelter, cast some light on

Sharp’s moral culpability for the manslaughter offence.

Sharp pleaded guilty to manslaughter at a preliminary Supreme Court hearing on December 15 after pleading not guilty at a contested committal hearing a few days earlier.

Crown prosecutor Andrew Grant detailed a number of witnesses’ accounts to the court, most of which referenced tension between Mr Starling, 35, and Sharp that simmered throughout the evening of June 7, 2013.

The court heard Amber Stewart, Sharp’s former partner with whom he has two children, told police a “stressed out” Sharp stated he punched Mr Starling in the jaw after he threatened to sleep with Ms Stewart.

Sharp then told Ms Stewart he was sure Mr Starling was dead.

Mr Starling suffered a laceration to a vertebral artery inside the skull and the court heard one witness recalled hearing a “weird choking noise”.

Victim impact statements were read out in court, including those from Mr Starling’s two young daughters.

“I feel like I don’t fit in at school any more because I don’t have a dad,” Mr Grant read to the court, as Sharp wiped tears from his eyes. “When I get my report at the end of the year, I can’t share it with him and tell him how well I did.”

Mr Starling’s nine-year-old daughter’s wrote: “Each Father’s Day, Christmas Day, birthday, we cry. I’m crying writing this.”

Barrister Tom Danos, for Sharp, said his client had an intellectual disability and deliberately used his weaker hand to punch Mr Starling. 

“I’m not going to stand here and say Mr Starling deserved what happened. Nevertheless, there seems there was interaction between the two.”

Justice Priest ordered the sentences being served by Sharp for armed robbery, theft and criminal damage be served concurrent with his manslaughter sentence.