Steven Cawley pleads guilty to assault at Ormond train station

A drunk carpenter has admitted to repeatedly punching a man and stomping on his head during a train station robbery.

A man charged over a violent, alcohol-fuelled assault has admitted to the offending more than 10 years later.

Steven Mark Cawley, 32, appeared in the Melbourne County Court on Monday to plead guilty to robbery, recklessly causing serious injury and intentionally causing injury over an incident on April 28, 2012.

Prosecutor Daniel White told the court Cawley and a friend had been drinking at an Ormond bar when they hit it off with an engaged couple enjoying a few drinks after attending the Cream Field’s Music Festival that afternoon.

He said the “band geeks” — one who introduced himself to the couple as ‘Steve’ and the other as ‘Daniel’ — spoke with the male for about 40 minutes until a bouncer told him to take his “drunk” fiancee home.

He exchanged numbers with Cawley and his mate before the couple left the bar and made a beeline for nearby Ormond train station about 9.30pm.

Shortly afterwards, while the couple continued waiting for their train to arrive, they met Cawley and his mate again.

The court heard the group had a friendly conversation for about 20 minutes, before the man remembered he needed to buy train tickets for himself and his fiancee.

Panic set in when he could not find the $150 wad of cash he had been carrying, before he remembered he had put it in his underwear “in case he met anyone dodgy”.

With relief he pulled it from his underwear and waved it at the group.

But the court was told the situation took a turn when the men “aggressively” and repeatedly demanded he hand over the cash.

CCTV footage aired to the court showed the woman becoming distressed and starting to cry.

Later expressing she thought the men were going to “roll” them, she tried to intervene but Cawley grabbed her around the waist and threw her onto the train tracks.

She landed hard and felt “extreme pain” in her arm meaning she was unable to climb back onto the platform, the court was told.

The men then started throwing punches and kicking at her fiance, causing him to fall to the ground.

The woman, still stuck on the tracks, was forced to watch on as he was “stomped on and bashed on the ground”.

The court heard he pleaded with the men to take his money before he blacked out.

One of the offenders threw the victim’s phone onto the tracks before they fled, which the woman used to call police.

The court heard the woman, who was in “excruciating pain”, was fretting about when the next train would arrive before a bystander helped her back onto the platform.

The woman sustained a complicated right wrist fracture that required surgery, while her partner sustained cuts, bruises and swelling to his neck and head, two black eyes, swollen ears and rib pain.

The court was told police tracked the offenders down through the phone numbers they had exchanged with the victims earlier in the night.

Cawley was charged and faced court in May that year and was granted bail in June.

Though in the months afterwards he offended in Queensland where he was ultimately sentenced to time in prison.

The Victorian case was adjourned as a result and he was re-arrested on warrant in Western Australia earlier this year and extradited back to Victoria where he remains in custody.

Defence barrister Christopher Edwards submitted his client had a turbulent childhood and was exposed to drugs and family violence.

He said Cawley, now a carpenter and father, was intoxicated at the time of the assault but was remorseful.

But Mr White said it was a “serious instance of alcohol-fuelled street violence” that needed to be deterred.

While he had lived and worked in the community for some periods in the last decade, he committed similar offences in 2020.

He will be sentenced later this month.