Trio plead guilty to assault occasioning bodily harm

Three men who took umbrage at a couple of teenage ‘smart a---ses’ and tried to ‘tell them off’ instead landed themselves in hot water after one of the victims was slashed with a sharp object in the ensuing fight.

Trio sentenced for assault occasioning bodily harm.

A decision by three men to “tell off” two drunk “smart-arse” teenagers in a cafe carpark has ended in court after the altercation turned bloody and one of the men slashed his victim with a “sharp instrument”.

Rade Trivanovic, Cody Steven Hazelgrove and Neil Allan Lightfoot each pleaded guilty to two charges of assault occasioning bodily harm for their involvement in a fight that broke out in Gympie’s Toucan Coffee carpark about 2am on November 20, 2022. 

Trivanovic and Lightfoot were sentenced together in Gympie Magistrates Court, with Hazelgrove sentenced immediately after via videolink from the watch house.

The trios sentencing Tuesday was almost a year to date of the incident.

The court heard 40 year-old Trivanovic met up with Lightfoot, 50, and Hazelgrove, 40, that night after playing pokies.

They had asked him to drive them home.

When stopped at traffic lights on their way home, the court was told they had been yelled at by a couple of drunk 18-year-olds.

Toucan Coffee on the corner of Bruce Highway and Monkland St is where an alleged stabbing occurred on November 20, 2022. Photo: Google Earth

Trivanovic’s defence solicitor told the court Trivanovic had described the boys as “smart arses” and said he was also once “young and foolish”.

Trivanovic then made a U-turn into the Toucan Coffee Shop carpark, on the Bruce Hwy, with “the intention of giving them a talking to”.

After he “exchanged initial words and gestures towards the victims, he returned back to the vehicle with the intention of leaving, as far as he was concerned they were done,” she said.

The victims then followed him back to the car where they were set upon by Hazelgrove and Lightfoot, the court was told.

When Trivanovic realised Hazelgrove was armed he went to leave, not wanting to be physically involved, his lawyer said.

He encouraged Lightfoot to leave with him.

Police prosecutor Sergeant Christie Mahoney acknowledged his return to get Lightfoot paused the fight and gave the teenagers a chance to flee.

She described Trivanovic as “the instigator because he was the first out of the vehicle and the first to engage verbally”, and said while he was not involved in the physical altercation he neither discouraged it nor assisted to help when one of the victims was wounded.

Neil Allan Lightfoot pleaded guilty to two charges of assault occasioning bodily harm. Gympie Magistrates Court, December 19, 2023.

The court heard how 50 year-old Lightfoot threw punches and pushed one of the teenagers to the ground.

Hazelgrove, as the principal offender, wielded a knife and was “slashing it around in a figure eight”, lacerating the cheek and hand of one of the victims.

Hazelgrove remained at the carpark and was picked up by an unknown party shortly after both victims had fled.

Lightfoot and Trivanovic had already driven away, the court heard.

Magistrate Bevan Hughes acknowledged the drug use and “pain” of Trivanovic’s troubled past.

“Your future does not have to be your past,” Mr Hughes said acknowledging the support of Trivanovic’s mother in the courtroom.

Gympie Magistrates Court generic.

Trivanovic pleaded guilty to two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm and was sentenced to 9 months imprisonment.

He appeared in court in custody with a 323 days of pre-custody, but will remain in custody due to other matters.

In passing Lightfoot’s sentence, Mr Hughes recognised the 50-year-old’s struggle with paranoia schizophrenia and how he had been living in a care home in Caloundra, receiving routine medication along with full abstinence from alcohol and drugs.

He said Lightfoot’s criminal history was concerning with “violence creeping in” since 2018.

Lightfoot pleaded guilty to two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm and one count of obstruction of police.

He was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment.

He had been released on parole in September 2023 on account of having already served 152 days in pre-sentence custody.

Neil Allan Lightfoot pleaded guilty to two charges of assault occasioning bodily harm. Gympie Magistrates Court, December 19, 2023.

Hazelgrove was in tears as Mr Hughes handed him his sentence, during which the magistrate referred to the stabbing of Hazelgrove’s father when he was only a boy, his “unravelling by substance abuse” and his “waste of a life” being in and out of prison and dependence on drugs.

He pleaded guilty to two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm, an 11 eleven other charges including stealing, drugs and unlawful use of a motor vehicle.

Hazelgrove was sentenced to two-and-a-half years imprisonment with 391 days spent in pre-custody.