BALCOMBE FEARED FOR SAFETY, COUSIN TELLS COURT
‘Frightened’ Balcombe was told: ‘We’re going to get you’
FRIGHTENED teenager Ricky Balcombe tried to move away from Geelong the week before he was murdered in the city’s Market Square shopping centre 23 years ago.
His older cousin last week told the Melbourne Supreme Court she offered the boy a room at her place in Blackburn in the days after his 16th birthday.
But the youngster was a member of a Geelong street gang known as the Main Street Criminals or Red Bandanas, and was drawn back to his hometown after only two nights.
A week later he was dead. Stabbed in the heart in the bustling shopping centre at 3.20pm on Friday, May 5, 1995.
The jury has heard the accused murderer Karl Michael Hague — then 21, now 44 — had beaten Balcombe up on Yarra St in Geelong two weeks before the killing.
On that night — April 21 — members of Balcombe’s gang sought immediate reprisal, setting upon Mr Hague and his friends, and attacking the car they were in with weapons, including an axe, machete, baseball bat and pool cues.
A number of witnesses gave evidence about the gang attack, with the number of assailants ranging from two or three to 20 and possibly more than 30.
It’s alleged Mr Hague suffered a cut neck in that incident and became angry, vowing vengeance.
Meanwhile, Balcombe briefly moved in with Simone Davis, then 17.
She told the jury her cousin was scared, and also needed to get away from the people he’d been associating with.
“I knew that he was hanging around with stupid people,” Ms Davis said.
“Uncle Rob and Aunty Peg (Ricky’s father and grandmother) just wanted him to come to Melbourne and just start fresh.”
Ms Davis said her cousin confided that he’d been given a “hiding” by some older men, a few days earlier.
“He (said he) went back and told his friends, and they retaliated and smashed up this person’s car,” Ms Davis said.
“Then Ricky said to me that he was scared that they were going to pay him back, and the person did say, “We’re going to get you” to him, and he was quite frightened.”
Ms Davis said she confiscated a 12-inch butcher’s knife from her cousin after finding it in his bag while he was unpacking. He told her he was holding the weapon for a friend.
She also revealed that during his short stay in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, Balcombe met up with an Asian friend called Ronnie.
It was the same day he told her he was planning to return to Geelong.
He asked her if Ronnie could stay the night, which he did, and the next morning — Friday, April 28, 1995 — the pair went to the bank so Balcombe could withdraw money.
He returned to Geelong later that day, but not before promising his cousin he’d come back to live with her the following Wednesday.
But he reneged on the promise.
Ms Davis did not see Balcombe on May 3, and did not see him ever again.
Within two days he was dead.
A key witness, Paul Bellia, told the jury on Friday Mr Hague was the man he saw fatally stab his friend and gangmate in Market Square. However, Mr Bellia — 17 at the time and now 40 — said he did not know Mr Hague at the time, and subsequently realised he was the killer.
It’s expected he will be cross-examined by Mr Hague’s lawyers this week.