Darwin rugby champ bouncer was ‘pretty scared’ Marine would ‘really hurt him’, court hears

A Darwin bouncer and 135kg premiership winning rugby prop ‘thought (he) was about to get really hurt’ after an 80kg US Marine took a swing at him, a court has heard.

A Darwin bouncer and 135kg premiership winning rugby prop “thought (he) was about to get really hurt” after an 80kg US Marine took a swing at him, a court has heard.

Hayden Robert Bruce Summers took the stand on the third day of his trial in the Supreme Court on Wednesday, after pleading not guilty to unlawfully causing the other man serious harm.

Summers told the jury he was trying to calm Glen Thomason down after the Marine had been ejected from Monsoons in the early hours of April 11 in the lead up to the altercation.

“He was pleading with me like ‘Please man, can you just speak to your friend and find out what happened’,” he said.

“And I was like ‘Mate, I’ve got no idea what happened inside, I don’t know why you’ve been asked to leave or kicked out, but it did get physical, there’s no chance of you coming back inside, let’s just leave it at that, yeah’.”

Summers said soon after another bouncer went back inside, Mr Thomason “started to get more agitated, more aggressive”.

“I said ‘Look, I’ve got no idea what happened inside, if you feel like there’s been some law broken or an injustice done against you, there’s a police station around the corner, you can go there and make a complaint’,” he said.

“Once I said that it was like something, you know, flicked a switch inside him, he became extremely aggressive straight away, started remonstrating with his hands, and became very, you know, quick with his movements and very aggressive again.

“This was when the very pointed threats of ‘Do you know who I am? Do you know what I’m capable of? I’m a trained Marine, I could kill you’.”

Summers said Mr Thomason kept repeating the threats, “getting more and more aggressive”, while “I tried to stay as calm as possible”, before “I saw a strike come towards my face”.

Monsoons bouncer Hayden Summers outside court. Picture: (A)manda Parkinson

“Honestly, I was pretty scared, this guy just ultimately took a swing at me and I sort of flinched, I thought I was about to get punched in the head, absolutely, you know, take my head off,” he said.

“I had a guy in front of me that had just threatened to hurt me, very capable, had explained how capable he was, of hurting me, and he’d just taken a swing at me, I thought I was about to get really hurt.

“When I saw the strike come, I sort of flinched and it was like, you know, a second or so of like, ‘Holy Hell, we’re here, this is a fight now’ and I reacted in self defence and slapped him across the face.”

In cross examination, Crown prosecutor Ian Rowbottom suggested Mr Thomason was “certainly not a man who posed a threat to two props from the South Darwin footy club”.

But Summers responded that he’d “definitely been knocked out by people smaller than Mr Thomason”.

The trial continues on Thursday.

Originally published as Darwin rugby champ bouncer was ‘pretty scared’ Marine would ‘really hurt him’, court hears