Judge scathing about street attack
FOUR men viciously beat a man in the street after googling his name and finding out he was a convicted sex offender, a court has heard.
‘‘It was a violent attack . . . creating mayhem, disorder and serious injury,’’ Judge Kevin Phillips told the Dunedin District Court yesterday.
The quartet’s ‘‘ringleader’’ Alex Layton MurphyFox (20) was yesterday jailed for two years and two months after admitting a count of injuring with intent to injure. His codefendants received communitybased sentences.
The court heard MurphyFox offered to meet the victim for a restorative justice conference where apologies are usually offered. Instead, he used the meeting to level further abuse at the man he left unconscious on a Dunedin street on July 7.
The defendants had been cruising around the city in the early hours, having consumed alcohol and MDMA.
In George St, they saw a member of the public confronting the victim and yelling about his criminal convictions.
The group — including Chance John Edwards (20), Caleb Edward Ross Stefani (19), and Matthew Robert Johnston (21) — searched online to verify the claims.
In 2013, they found, the man had been jailed for nearly five years for sexually abusing a young girl.
Despite having no connection to the case, the men parked on Moray Pl, exited the car and launched into the vigilante violence.
They surrounded the victim. MurphyFox was first to strike. He punched the man in the head then held him for Edwards to do the same.
Kicks from MurphyFox sent the victim to the ground but gave him the opportunity to break free.
However, Stefani pounced, aiming a punch at the man’s head but hitting his arm, before leaving the scene.
Johnston threw a bottle at the victim’s head, which missed.
MurphyFox and Edwards then beat the man in tandem but it was the former who took the violence up a notch.
He held the victim from behind in a ‘‘bear hug’’ then dropped him on to the road head first, knocking him unconscious.
While he lay there, MurphyFox kicked him in the head.
‘‘What did you two brave soldiers do then?’’ Judge Phillips asked.
‘‘You ran away . . . from a man needing urgent medical attention.’’
The victim suffered concussion, a laceration to his head and a fractured neck.
The court heard he was rehospitalised when he suffered seizures as a result of the beating.
‘‘It was unprovoked, gratuitous street violence,’’ the judge said.
Johnston was the only member of the group with a significant conviction; he had been jailed for an armed robbery in Oamaru when he was a teenager.
Judge Phillips sentenced him to seven months’ home detention and 270 hours’ community work.
Edwards received seven months’ home detention and 190 hours’ community work; and Stefani got 220 hours’ community work and 18 months’ intensive supervision.
All but MurphyFox were ordered to pay the victim $500.