Stripper-turned-rapper and boyfriend guilty of pub assault
A former Miss Nude Sydney and her tattooist boyfriend launched an attack that left a young woman with a mouth injury requiring 16 stitches.
Central Sydney
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A stripper-turned-rapper and her tattoo artist beau’s hazy account of a smoking room assault at an inner city pub last year was not enough to convince a court someone else was to blame.
Jessica ‘The Jackel’ Aitchison and her boyfriend Reece Barry Mobbs, had denied any involvement in a violent incident at the Burdekin Hotel in the early hours of July 29 where a plastic cup was launched at the face of legal secretary Lauren Cameron.
Aitchison and Mobbs offered vague recollections of the smoking room assault, claiming the horrific split lip Ms Cameron suffered – which required 16 stitches – was caused by another patron.
But Magistrate Joan Baptie found the duo’s evidence was “implausible, improbable and unreliable”, finding that Aitchison was guilty of reckless wounding and Mobbs had spat and yelled at Ms Cameron – who they overheard making disparaging remarks about “female Soundcloud rappers”.
Ms Cameron earlier this year gave evidence that she did not see the cup being thrown, but saw Aitchison with something in her hand “ready to launch” and put “two and two together”.
She required five stitches inside and 11 outside her mouth to treat the wound caused by the incident.
Kiwi-born Aitchison, who once won Miss Nude Sydney before turning her hand to hip-hop, had pleaded not guilty to reckless wounding.
The court found Ms Cameron’s friends Amy Absalom and Franz Schrammel – Aitchison’s ex-boyfriend – to be “credible” witnesses, unlike the accused couple.
Mobbs, who had pleaded guilty to common assault for his role in the incident, denied the police allegations he “spat and yelled” at Ms Cameron during cross examination on Thursday.
Instead he claimed the act of removing a cigarette from his mouth “could have been construed” as spitting.
Police prosecutor Brett Eurell alleged in court that Mobbs had called Ms Cameron a “slut” or a “whore” after she had made disparaging comments about Aitchison.
The burly 6’3” man refuted towering over her after she had said, “The Jackel, what a sh** career choice”. Any saliva or spittle that may have left his mouth would not have done so “intentionally”, he said.
“When I’m speaking right now there’s probably spittle coming out of my mouth,” he said.
Mobbs was repeatedly pressed on conversations he had with Aitchison and others, as well as times and events of the night, questions to which he often replied “I don’t recall” and referred to as “semantics”.
“This happened a year and a half ago,” he said. “We live off Oxford St, we go out drinking quite regularly. I can’t give you a recollection of something I don’t remember.”
CCTV footage played in court showed Aitchison, 27, and Mobbs, 29, leaving the Oxford St establishment at 1.29am and 1.30am respectively.
Aitchison was shown to return and speak to security on her own at 1.32am, a move which Sgt Eurell said disproved the couple’s evidence that she left ahead of Mobbs because of a “pre-planned agreement” to meet at their then Poplar St home.
She was fleeing to “avoid apprehension”, he said.
Defence solicitor Phillip Carey argued, however, that Aitchison’s return to the venue minutes later proved she was not fleeing the scene.
“She didn’t actually flee, she actually comes back,” he said. “There was no fear, there was no fleeing from police.”
Magistrate Baptie said after a “long, considered analysis” of all the evidence, she was satisfied the prosecution had proven the charges beyond reasonable doubt.
The duo will return to Downing Centre Local Court in December for sentence.
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