Karl Gruber banished from the NT for ‘savage, prolonged and brutal’ Christmas Eve beating

A man involved in the beating of a reveller on Darwin’s nightclub strip will be released to spend this year’s holidays with his family.

A MAN involved in the “savage, prolonged and brutal” beating of a reveller on Darwin’s nightclub strip last Christmas Eve will be released to spend this year’s holidays with his family.

Karl Gruber, 20, is due to be released on a suspended sentence two days before Christmas after pleading guilty in the Supreme Court to unlawfully causing serious harm.

The court heard Gruber was drinking at a nightclub in the Darwin CBD when he became involved in a “large disturbance” at about 3.15am on December 24 last year.

He and a group of other men and women spilt out of the club where the “obviously drunk and ill-tempered” group continued to engage in physical altercations with other members of the public.

In sentencing, Chief Justice Michael Grant said when the victim of the subsequent assault tried to leave the scene to avoid further trouble, Gruber chased after him and the pair began throwing punches at each other.

“While that was happening, your male co-offender came up behind the victim in an extraordinarily cowardly fashion and king hit him twice to the head,” he said.

The group continued to attack the victim, again chasing him when he tried to run away, before Gruber began to punch him “savagely and repeatedly as he lay defenceless on the ground”.

“Shamefully, you then stood over the victim and kicked him again in the head and punched him two more times to the stomach,” he said.

“It would have been obvious to anybody who was not in an alcohol-fuelled frenzy that the victim was not moving by that point in time and had lost consciousness.

“That you continued to assault the victim in those circumstances is a matter of great discredit to you and makes me question your character generally.”

Karl Gruber. Picture: Facebook

Chief Justice Grant said the “pack” of men and women then dragged the victim along the road before one of the women pulled off his shorts to expose his genitals.

“In all, the victim was kicked, stomped, punched and slapped more than 50 times in a period of seven minutes by you and your co-offenders,” he said.

“You all acted with a common purpose to seriously assault the victim and you bear responsibility not only for your own conduct but also for the conduct of your co-offenders to a degree.”

Chief Justice Grant said the victim was left with a traumatic brain injury as a result of the beating but “despite the unhinged ferocity of that attack”, Gruber did not have a prior history of violence.

He said while Gruber had “consumed a lot of alcohol in circumstances where you are not usually a heavy drinker”, he did not accept the attack had come in response to racial abuse by the victim.

In handing Gruber a three year jail sentence, suspended after 12 months, Chief Justice Grant warned him to get straight on a plane to Victoria upon his release and not come back.

“What that means, Mr Gruber, is that you will be able to be home by Christmas this year because you will be released on 23 December,” he said.

“Not only will you be able to be home by Christmas this year, you will have to be home by Christmas this year, because if you do not leave on the 23rd or the 24th I will have you arrested and taken back to prison.”