Four men accused of an assault that left another man toothless and vomiting blood have all pleaded not guilty at Moruya Local Court.
Dressed in suits and ties, Connor Charles Maxwell Thurgood, Giuseppe Francisco Tine, Jamie John Ward and Mitchell Barnes sat side-by-side on a bench in the second row during their hearing on Friday, October 31.
Thurgood is a 21-year-old man from Googong in the ACT, Ward is also 21 and from the Canberra suburb of Gordon, Tine is 19, and Barnes is 20, and both are from Royalla south of Canberra on the NSW/ACT border.
Police prosecutors alleged that on February 28, the group was involved in a violent brawl along Beach Road in Batemans Bay after being ejected from the Catalina Club, and were charged with multiple counts of assault on three men.
However, the men's lawyers argued there was little firm evidence linking the four men to the actual assailants.
Under questioning by police prosecutor Sergeant David Weaver, witnesses described an average Friday night that had gone horribly awry.
The court heard that the alleged victims began drinking at the Monarch Hotel in Moruya at 5pm.
Sarah Carter testified that she had picked up her cousin and friends from the nearby Adelaide Hotel about 9pm before driving them to the Catalina Country Club.
After signing in, Ms Carter said she bought drinks and sat in the main bar while the men went into the roulette room.
She said she soon heard swearing and yelling, and security guards "manhandled" her friends to the exit.
Security footage played to the court showed an interaction between the complainants and a group of other men, who the prosecution alleged were the accused.
After watching this footage, Catalina Club's duty manager, Phillip Taylor, compiled what he believed were the sign-in details of the four accused, which included addresses and photo IDs, and provided them to the police.
After leaving the Catalina Club at about 11pm, Ms Carter said she drove to Malua Bay to drop off one of their group members before returning to pick up those who remained in Batemans Bay.
She testified that the group had left the Catalina Club and began to walk up Beach Road toward McDonalds restaurant.
Bradley Brown, who lives on Beach Road, told the court he was in bed when he heard a commotion around 11.20pm.
"I heard lots of yelling, footsteps, things out of the ordinary that I wouldn't usually hear that time of night," he said.
He told the court he saw "six or seven people" running up and down the street, before he heard "someone being assaulted" for five minutes.
"I could see from a distance three males were assaulting another male on the fenceline," he said.
"I saw three men converge on another single male, and they chased him around out of my sight, and from there I heard slaps, thuds and moans."
Mr Brown said he called the police and began filming the encounter on his phone.
At the same time, Ms Carter told the court she was driving up Beach Road, scanning the footpath for her cousin, when she said she saw a group of men on the side of the road.
Ms Carter filmed one of the men yelling and walking toward a white ute, which she identified in court by its registration.
When she went looking for her cousin, she testified she found him slumped against a mailbox, his face covered in blood. His teeth were missing.
"It was quite a horrific sight," she told the court.
She told the other men in the group to get her cousin to the car. She stayed behind to look for his teeth. She said she found and collected them.
The group then began to drive toward Moruya, Ms Carter said, but her cousin seemed increasingly unwell.
"He was very dazed, he wasn't talkative at all, he was grabbing around his waist," she told the court.
"He said very calmly, 'Please pull the car over', and he started vomiting a lot of blood."
Ms Carter delivered her cousin to the emergency department at Moruya Hospital, where he was intubated.
While a friend of one of the complainants, Alex Norris, testified he was able to identify two of the four accused, the defence consistently questioned the reliability of the identification.
The hearing began with a full day devoted to the admissibility of evidence that identified the accused using a gallery of photos.
Barrister Ellen Hile, representing Thurgood, successfully argued that proper police procedure had not been followed during the identification process.
Investigating officer Senior Constable Wyatt Martyn conceded in his evidence that one of the complainants was shown a photograph of one of the accused before being asked to identify him.
The sitting magistrate, Brian Van Zuylen, ultimately decided it could not be used.
The atmosphere in the court was often tense.
Ms Hile and Mr Van Zuylen were occasionally combative, with the magistrate telling her she was "discourteous," and once asking her, "Are you going to stand up or are you just going to shout?" when she neglected to rise for a question.
Although the hearing was scheduled for three days, the matter did not reach completion on Friday.
The matter was adjourned, and a decision was expected to be reached at Batemans Bay Local Court on December 8, 2025.