THE MAN accused of punching Irish backpacker Gearóid Walsh outside a Sydney restaurant 19 months ago has been ordered to face trial for manslaughter.
Magistrate Carolyn Barkell yesterday committed Tobias Simmons to stand trial next month in the New South Wales district court. Mr Simmons is accused of striking Dubliner Gearóid Walsh (23), who never regained consciousness after the incident in October 2009 in the Sydney suburb of Coogee.
Mr Walsh died four days later, after his mother, Tressa, arrived in Sydney from Dublin and the family decided to take him off life support. Mr Simmons has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter.
In a committal hearing last month a witness told the court she saw someone being hit and stumble back out of her view.
Helen Skotadis said she then saw the victim lying on the ground turning blue, and that “even his hands were turning blue”.
“The brother was very emotional . . . then he took off up the street,” she said.
At an earlier hearing a court heard that Mr Walsh swore at his brother, Ciarán, who was trying to stop him from returning to an argument with Mr Simmons, moments before the alleged attack. Ciarán Walsh told the court he and Gearóid had been drinking on and off from 8am on October 25th, 2009.
He said he, his brother and some friends had been asked to leave two local pubs, the Coogee Bay hotel and Coogee Palace hotel, after a doorman in one bar saw Gearóid “dancing by himself”.
Later that night, when Gearóid Walsh was fumbling for money to pay for his order at the Coogee Yeeros kebab shop, he got into an argument with Mr Simmons.
“I got to my brother and said ‘Let’s go’, because I could sense things were getting out of hand,” Ciarán Walsh told the court.
“We walked down the street . . . but after maybe 20 seconds, Gearóid turned around and starting walking back up.
“I thought he just wanted to get away from me because I’d given him a telling off [about the argument] . . . but then I saw him turn back into the Coogee Yeeros.”
In August 2008 Corkman David Keohane was viciously assaulted in the same suburb where Mr Walsh died. Mr Keohane was flown back to Ireland while still in a coma, from which he emerged on St Patrick’s Day, 2009.
The case against Mr Simmons has been adjourned until June 10th.