An American backpacker has pleaded guilty to smuggling a 24-carat gold-plated gun into Sydney Airport last year, after claiming it was an accident in court earlier today.
Liliana Goodson travelled all the way from Florida to attend clown school in Sydney, but landed in court instead after she was caught with a handgun in her luggage at Sydney International Airport in May 2023.
She had initially pleaded not guilty and was fighting the charges in front of a Magistrate this morning, more than a year after the incident.
In a video of her interview with Australian Border Force (ABF) officials, the court heard that Goodson had forgotten that she had packed the gun, which was plated in 24-carat gold.
“When I got over here the gun was not even in the back of my mind at all,” she told investigators at the time.
“I did not remember…my memory failed me.”
Goodson had declared that she was carrying cat, squirrel and rabbit parts on her incoming passenger card, but failed to mention the gun.
Phone records showed she had googled, “Can I carry a gun in my suitcase?” before her flight.
“When I looked on Google, it’s because I was trying to figure out how to get the gun from America to Australia,” she told the ABF in May last year.
“The Google advice was as long as I kept the gun inside my case, there would be no issues.”
“I have very limited life experience, a lot of things that would be common sense to people would not be common to me.”
In the video, she also told Border Force investigators that she intended to carry the pistol for protection in Australia, as she did in the US.
“I am scared of shooting it… I would probably just pistol whip until I got training again,” she said.
The court also heard that she previously owned two other guns while living in the States, but she had accidentally given them away.
”Those guns I ended up giving away, because I accidentally left them in a donation box.”
After she was reminded of what she said in her interview with ABF agents, she backflipped and pleaded guilty to importing both the handgun and ammunition into the country.
The 29-year-old is now facing up to two years behind bars.
She will argue she was suffering from mental health issues at her sentencing in November.
