Texts, six jabs and left to die

BIKIES Wade Yates-Taui and Benjamin Mortimer were hanging out at the Finks clubhouse on the Gold Coast on the night of June 22, 2013.

Less than 12 hours later they were fleeing the scene of a stabbing that left a man dead in the heart of Broadbeach.

About 3am on June 23, Yates-Taui and Mortimer went to the apartment of a friend, Dane Milkovic, before telling him: “We need to do a swift duck out”.

Another friend, Cohen Smith, had made arrangements to meet Waller for a fight after the trio found out the 28-year-old had been seeing Smith’s ex-girlfriend.

Yates-Taui and Mortimer drove to Paradise Island to pick up Smith and headed to a park nearby the Broadbeach unit complex Carmel by the Sea.

Before the killing, Mortimer texted Waller about a rumour that Waller was going to testify against him for a home invasion that resulted a man’s jaw being broken. Mortimer said he’d spoken with his solicitor and now knew it was another person who had allegedly rolled on him.

It was almost 5am when CCTV captured the group’s car arriving. Two minutes later Waller had been stabbed six times in his right side, the back of his ribs and his chest.

Waller was seen on CCTV footage running 100m toward the Carmel by the Sea apartments before collapsing near the intercom.

About 40 minutes later he was found by a friend with a Taser underneath his body.

After the stabbing, the attackers got rid of their phones.

Mortimer, a professional martial arts fighter, later failed to turn up to court over the home invasion and was reported missing by his mother.

More than two weeks later, he was found disorientated on the highway near the Finks clubhouse in Victoria.

Mortimer was so high on ice he had to be hospitalised before being charged, the Supreme Court heard.

Finks bikie and cage fighter Yates-Taui was arrested about 10 months after Waller’s death and extradited from the US.

The court heard he fled Australia after the killing, first travelling to Indonesia and then California. He served 118 days in custody in the US in 2014 before being extradited to Australia.

On July 10, 2013, Smith was interviewed by police.

All three men pleaded guilty to Waller’s manslaughter and are being sentenced in the Supreme Court in Brisbane today.