“All of this sets the scene for what happened to Mr Connolly. Samuel Connolly was a 47 year old man who lived in the unit next to the offender’s friend.”

The offender met Mr Connolly when he moved in with his friend, although he previously knew him by sight.

On New Year’s Eve the offender had been drinking during the day but not to the usual excess and not at all during the evening when he was babysitting the child of his roommate's girlfriend. He decided to make up for it the following day when he commenced drinking at around 9am.

The case set out how the two men had words and threats were made.

“The offender then challenged him to a fight. Mr Connolly did not take up the challenge.

“The offender admitted that he struck Mr Connolly a number of times to the head and that he ended up with a cut to his own knuckles.

The offender then left and continued drinking somewhere that he could not recall.

Mr Cox returned to the unit “some hour, early hour in the morning”. He was accompanied by someone whose name he was not prepared to provide to the police.

The offender said that he could hear Mr Connolly through the “paper thin walls” and challenged him again to a fight but Mr Connolly did not respond.

At some stage he heard Mr Connolly slam closed the front door of his unit. The offender described to the police what happened then:

“I then in a blind rage snapped, walked into (his friend’s) room, lifted his bed, pulled out approximately 40 to 50 centimetre truck wrench missing the internal wrench part. I climbed across the veranda, I pulled his screen off, I went through his open window and proceeded to beat him across the body while he layed (sic) on his couch”.

He said he then returned to (his friend’s) unit, washed the implement and himself and then left. He said that as he passed Mr Connolly’s unit he saw through the window that he was not on the couch and there was a light on in the bathroom. In other words, he understood Mr Connolly to be alive. Unbeknown to the offender he was to die an hour or two later.

Police had been called out to the premises at about 8.30pm on the night in response to a complaint by Mr Connolly that somebody had smashed the front window of his unit.

At about 10pm a lady who lived across the road called police to report that Mr Connolly’s neighbours were arguing with him and that they had pushed him over. Two officers attended. The offender and another person were identified as the likely perpetrators for what had occurred and it was intended to follow it up in the morning.

A neighbour called the ambulance at about 4am. When the officers arrived a very short time later they were told by the neighbour that Mr Connolly had been assaulted about an hour to an hour and a half earlier.

The officers found Mr Connolly sitting on the lounge in his unit. He was seriously injured and there was a lot of blood about but he was described as being alert and oriented.

He was experiencing breathing difficulties. He was assisted downstairs to the waiting ambulance and there placed on a stretcher. At that point he became agitated and then suddenly passed away. Resuscitation efforts were to no avail.

The judge ruled: “I accept that the offender did not intend to kill Mr Connolly but I am satisfied that his intention was to inflict most grievous bodily harm upon him.”