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Two Irish men were acquitted of murdering a homeless retiree after arguing they were attacked by the 66-year-old at the end of a night of drunkenness in Sydney.
Nathan Kelly, 23, and Christopher McLaughlin, 25, both from Donegal, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Paul Tavelardis, who died nine days after an altercation with the Irish in Grosvenor Crescent, Summer Hill, on December 29. of 2018.
Both men had argued that they never intended to kill or cause really serious harm and had responded to an attack by Paul Tavelardis, who lived in his car on the street.
The Crown had argued that the younger men had repeatedly hit the retiree after he fell to the ground, a claim denied by both men.
Not guilty verdicts
After deliberating for nearly a week, the New South Wales Supreme Court jury returned not guilty verdicts for both murder and manslaughter this morning.
Judge Geoffrey Bellew thanked the jurors for their service and said that “judging another person is not an easy task, as I am sure you will all appreciate.”
Both defendants, from Donegal, Ireland, had spent more than 20 months in pretrial detention and have had their vacation and work visas revoked since then.
That sparked a debate after the verdicts when Judge Bellew questioned whether a Corrective Services officer could continue to hold Kelly and McLaughlin before immigration authorities came to court.
“Mr. Kelly is willing to accompany you to the immigration authorities. He doesn’t want to roam the community, ”said the Irishman’s lawyer.
“I imagine you want to go home,” Judge Bellew responded.
McLaughlin also indicated that he was willing to wait in court for immigration authorities to arrive.
Suburb
During the three-week trial, the jury had heard that the two men had been drinking heavily during the afternoon and night before the 12:30 a.m. incident.
After laying down at the Summer Hill train station while stumbling through the suburb, they got into a car and drove noisily around the suburb.
Upon their return to Grosvenor Cres, where they also lived, the two men said they found Tavelardis trying to break into McLaughlin’s ute.
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Attorneys for both men said that after a brief conversation, the older man struck Mr. Kelly with a metal pipe.
A neighbor recalled hearing a loud cry of “fear” and looking out the window to see Tavelardis running around his car with a large object in hand towards the merchants.
But the other men began to brutally beat him, the neighbor told the jury.
Police who arrived on the scene a minute later found McLaughlin standing in the middle of the street, with bloody knuckles, fingers and ankles.
In a later police interview, Kelly lifted his shirt to reveal a welt on his back where he said Tavelardis had struck him on the back.
Kelly had been kicked out of the pub prior to the attack, while McLaughlin was described by a witness as “blind drunk” around 11pm.
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