Families challenge coroner’s evidence call

THE families of two men stabbed at Alva Beach have applied for a review of a coroner’s decision to stand down the man who inflicted the fatal wounds, Dean Webber, from giving verbal evidence at the inquest.

Deputy State Coroner Jane Bentley decided to let Mr Webber ( pictured) give his evidence in writing at the highly anticipated inquest into the deaths of Thomas Davy and Corey Christensen this month due to his post-traumatic stress disorder.

The families’ legal teams applied for a judicial review of Ms Bentley’s decision in the Supreme Court yesterday, and a preliminary hearing has been set down in the Brisbane Supreme Court on Friday.

The five-day inquest at Cairns lifted the lid on the stabbing, hearing from about 20 witnesses.

Mr Davy and Mr Christensen were fatally stabbed at Mr Webber’s Topton Street home in October 2018.

They were looking for Candice Locke, Mr Davy’s girlfriend, who had run into the house to seek help after falling from a buggy and breaking her shoulder. Mr Webber stabbed the men after they broke into his house, but police chose not to lay charges as they deemed his actions were in self defence. Mr Webber told police Ms Locke had told him the men were “bad people” and he said they were yelling and threatening him from outside the house. Ms Locke says she does not remember hearing any threats as she sat in Mr Webber’s kitchen, but says she heard a scuffle inside the house. Another man, Louis Bengoa, who was with the men at Mr Webber’s house looking for Ms Locke, claims he went to urinate around the side of the house and came back to see Mr Davy running from the house and coughing up blood.

Neither man could be saved, and the inquest highlighted a lack of urgency in the response of police, who did not arrive for 50 minutes.

The inquest was adjourned for Mr Webber to complete his evidence in writing after his doctor said he was too traumatised to relive the events in person or over the phone.