Evander “Woody” Tuala was fatally struck after leaving a nightclub in inner Sydney in April 2022.
Five individuals were found guilty of affray following a confrontation with Tuala’s friends on the street, although no one has been formally charged concerning the 23-year-old’s demise, according to the inquest held this week.
Among the convicted, Joel Tutt and Brayden Holten testified at the inquest that the group never discussed or identified who delivered the hit that rendered Tuala unconscious.
Tuala died from brain injuries after falling and hitting his head on the footpath of Oxford Street in Darlinghurst.
Two groups of men started fighting at the Oxford Hotel on April 9, 2022, before they left the venue about 12.30am.
The groups interacted a second time in nearby Taylor Square minutes later, with footage capturing Tuala collapsing after being struck.
Tutt recounted exiting the Oxford Hotel and noticing a friend encircled by several men, noting that what transpired afterward was “all a bit of a blur”.
“They were all throwing punches and I done (sic) what I thought was right and helped my friend out,” he told the court.
“I got hit by one of the 10 people surrounding him … I hit him back.”
Tutt said he and the four other men convicted of affray, who are his childhood friends, had never discussed who punched Tuala, even after he died.
“I asked them if they had seen what was on the news and stuff, but I never asked them about details,” he said.
“I didn’t really want to talk about it.”
In farcical scenes, Tutt appeared unable to recognise long-term friend Keidan Donovan-Phillips when shown CCTV footage clearly depicting him.
Donovan-Phillips, along with another group member, Byron Brown-Yeo, subsequently chose not to testify at the inquest to avoid the danger of self-incrimination.
Their companion Brayden Holten previously testified at the inquest that he instinctively felt his friends were involved in the altercation in inner Sydney, prompting him to rush over to join the commotion.
But Holten said he did not see who threw the fatal punch despite being metres from the incident.
Holten remembered a “push-and-shove” incident inside the establishment before he and his friends were expelled and was shown footage of himself running on the street and maneuvering around a lamp post to engage in the melee after hearing the conflict outside.
“There was just a bunch of people yelling … I had a gut feeling it was my mates,” he told the court.
But his memory of the night was sketchy and he was unable to recall several key details in the lead-up to the death.
Video showing Tuala being punched and knocked down before being kicked while on the ground was played in court, drawing audible sobs from a distraught family member.
Holten denied being the person who kicked Tuala or that he saw who did.
He was shown footage of him tying his shirt around his face and said part of his reasoning to do so was “to look intimidating”.
“I was being a drunk idiot that night, wasn’t I?”
A CT scan soon after Tuala arrived at St Vincent’s Hospital showed a number of fractures and a brain haemorrhage.
He had surgery that day but was later declared brain dead, with his life support turned off.
