Tyler Benjamin Masters guilty of brutal baseball bat beating, multiple drug busts
A Gold Coast man ambushed a stranded associate whom he had a beef with, pounding him repeatedly with a metal baseball bat on a suburban Coomera street in the dead of night, a court has heard.
Police & Courts
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A Gold Coast man with a history of drug abuse has admitted beating an associate black and blue with a metal baseball bat, resulting in vertebrae fractures.
Pimpama man Tyler Benjamin Masters, 31, appeared in Southport Magistrates Court on Tuesday via audiovisual link from his remand in pre-sentence custody.
He entered guilty pleas to 14 charges, most seriously assault occasioning bodily harm while armed, with the remaining 13 charges all relating to the possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia.
At 3am on March 2 last year, Masters’ assault victim and another person were stranded at Cirrus Way, Coomera, following a vehicle breakdown, when Masters arrived as a passenger in a vehicle.
Police prosecutor Sergeant Blair Casey said the defendant alighted with a metal baseball bat.
The stranded man fled, but Masters caught up with him and knocked him to the ground with a full-blooded swing.
Masters then struck the man several times to the back of his legs, and to his hands when he raised them in a defensive posture, amid other blows directly to his body.
The assault ceased when a neighbour was roused by the commotion and verbally intervened, with Masters fleeing in the vehicle he had arrived in.
Sergeant Casey said the assaulted man was transported by paramedics to hospital, where it was discovered he had two fractured vertebrae in his lower back, amid other injuries that included severe bruising.
The prosecutor described the attack as “gratuitous violence”, while Magistrate Joan White mused that Masters was lucky not to have been charged with grievous bodily harm.
The court heard there was some prior relationship between Masters and his victim, although it was not immediately clear from the material placed on the record.
Additionally to the assault, Masters was also busted on three separate occasions – twice at Pimpama and once at Mermaid Waters – in possession of a cornucopia of illicit substances.
They included methamphetamine (in excess of 2g), cocaine, testosterone, alprazolam (a benzodiazepine used in anxiety treatment), sildenafil and tadalafil (both used in the treatment of erectile dysfunction), and 1,4-butanediol (a GHB precursor).
Masters, who was remanded in pre-sentence custody on September 8 last year, wished to enter residential rehabilitation following his release from incarceration, and had work available to him, the court was told.
He was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment with immediate release on court-ordered parole, taking into account 220 days on remand.
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