Road rage fight sparked fatal bashing outside St Albans school
The shocking reason a father-of-two was bashed to death with a wooden post and metal pole outside a school has been heard in court.
A shocking road rage incident sparked a fatal brawl outside a school where three men bashed a Melbourne dad to death with a wooden post and metal pole.
Father-of-two Ilaijah Kuru was beaten to death with the weapons outside St Paul’s Kealba Catholic School at St Albans on February 20 last year.
Nathan Timoteo, Josaia Bolalailai and Jonathan Fuatavai admitted to manslaughter and other charges in the Supreme Court of Victoria.
The 24-year-old victim was brutally attacked and killed when he went to help his friend Isaac Tagatanuu retrieve a phone following a shocking road rage incident that happened earlier that day, the court was told on Thursday.
Mr Tagatanuu was assaulted over claims Timoteo and Bolalailai were tailgating him in a car, prosecutor Neil Hutton told the court.
Footage aired in court showed the driver getting pushed to the ground before the pair started kicking and punching him.
Timoteo called a woman who tried to intervene a “f***ing mole” and said “this is not over” during the road rage incident which last just over seven-and-half-minutes.
The injured driver managed to escape the fight with facial injuries but his phone and wallet were missing.
Several hours later Mr Kuru, Mr Tagatanuu and two other men were driving to Sunshine Hospital when they spotted the attackers near Sunshine Avenue and pulled over to try and get the phone back.
Timoteo grabbed a pickaxe and started to chase the four men and was followed by Bolalailai and Futavai who was armed with a metal pole.
The trio assaulted two men before they turned their attention to Kuru and chased him down before all three started to assault him with a variety of weapons including a wooden post and a metal pole.
The now 24-year-old Timoteo hit the victim four times as he lay on the ground with enough force the wood snapped, prosecutor Neil Hutton said.
Shocking video played in the court shows the men brutally beating Kuru with the implements until he stopped moving.
The father-of-two was treated at the scene but died without regaining consciousness, the court was told.
The victim’s mother Lisa Maxwell said she started to get worried for her son when she hadn’t heard from him and she didn’t believe it when she found out he was dead.
“It was an excruciating pain, unexplainable and unbearable to be going through these emotions all alone is completely indescribable,” Ms Maxwell said.
“Now that my worst nightmare has been confirmed I am completely numb. I cannot talk, break, or see straight and all I do is cry,” she told the court.
When arrested by police after the incident Fuatavai told police “I don’t even know these f***ing c***s”.
“I didn’t even know these guys, they came up and started beating me up,” he said.
Timoteo told officers he had been involved in the earlier incident but said it was a “heated argument” and they shook hands afterwards.
Bolalailai denied being part of the road rage incident and said he was in the “garage when everything happened” during the fatal attack, the court was told.
The attack was “graphic and disturbing” Timoteo’s defence lawyer John Desmond said.
He asked Justice James Elliott to take into account his client had pleaded guilty at an early stage, was remorseful, was of relatively young age and was working to rehabilitate.
However he said the level of force used in the attack was “moderated”.
Bolalailai’s lawyer Cynthia Lynch said her client had a “misconceived paranoia” about what happened on the day.
The pre-sentence hearing continues on Friday.