A Perth man accused of murdering a New Zealand man doesn’t deny pushing him through a second-storey hotel window to his death.
The question facing a West Australian Supreme Court jury on Tuesday was whether or not it was an accident.
Sitting through the first day of the murder trial of Stefan Pahia Schmidt, 25, the jury was shown a security video of 29-year-old Andrew Marshall plunging to his death on the evening of May 8, 2011.
The footage showed a window dislodging and falling from the second floor of the Ocean Beach Hotel in the swanky Perth suburb of Cottesloe, shattering on the concrete below.
Mr Marshall followed, landing in a crumpled heap on the footpath.
He died a few hours later in hospital.
The video, which also featured the lead-up to the incident, was played for the court as prosecutor Amanda Forrester explained during her opening address what was happening on the screen.
At one point, two young women identified as friends of Schmidt, were seen to walk off camera with Mr Marshall following them.
A large, bald man identified as Schmidt – who weighs 152kg – then strode across the danceroom floor in the same direction.
Ms Forrester told the court what happened next was that Schmidt argued with Mr Marshall over the girls and pushed him through the window – as his own defence lawyer, Tom Percy, would later submit.
In the video, Schmidt reappeared and seemed to briefly exchange words with a bar patron before punching him to the ground and throwing him across the floor.
The footage then cut to outside the pub, where first the broken window and then Mr Marshall, fall about seven metres to the ground as security guards and patrons rush to his aid.
The final frames, Ms Forrester told the court, showed Schmidt exiting the hotel from the ground floor and, “with barely a glance to his left, where Mr Marshall lay dying on the pavement … he walks off into the night”.
Schmidt has pleaded not guilty, with Mr Percy submitting that Mr Marshall’s death was a tragic and dreadful accident.
The trial before Judge Ralph Simmonds continues.
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