Jeremy Brock Biber pleads not guilty to assault occasioning bodily harm of 15-year-old girl

A 29-year-old man has denied punching a teenage girl at a Toowoomba shopping centre because she allegedly threw a rock.

Jeremy Brock Biber leaving Toowoomba Courthouse 21/2/24.

A 29-year-old Toowoomba man accused of assaulting a 15-year-old girl at a city shopping centre has pleaded not guilty to a charge of assault occasioning bodily harm.

Opening the prosecution case against Jeremy Brock Biber, Crown prosecutor Emily Coley told the Toowoomba District Court the girl and two younger siblings had gone to Wyalla Plaza on September 19, 2022, and ordered some food from a cafe.

While they waited for their order, the children walked around to another section of the centre but the then 15-year-old girl tripped on a rock which she had then picked up with the intention of throwing it into a garden bed.

However, she had thrown the rock further than intended and it went onto the road in the car park, she said.

Jeremy Brock Biber leaving Toowoomba Courthouse 21/2/24.

Shortly after, Mr Biber, who was parked nearby having attended the shops with his father Clayton Biber, had allegedly approached the girl screaming that the rock had allegedly hit their car.

The teenager claimed Mr Biber then grabbed her by the hair, pulled her over a railing of the garden bed and punched her to the back of the head, back of the neck and arms, Ms Coley said.

Mr Biber then allegedly yelled at the girl who was crying before a woman alighted from a nearby car and intervened, she said.

Mr Biber and his father then left, she said.

Ms Coley said the defendant’s father Clayton Biber would tell the court something different, that he heard a loud noise, that something had hit their car.

“He hadn’t seen it but he heard it,” she said.

Clayton Biber said he saw a girl in the garden with something in her hand like asphalt about to throw it, she said.

He claimed that they yelled at the girl and she had apologised, she said.

Ms Coley said after the girl went home she told her mother who called police.

The next day the girl was taken to a doctor claiming her arms were red and numb and she had a headache and a lump on the back of her head, Ms Coley Said.

The girl, now 17, would give evidence at the trial, she said.

Defence barrister John Davis, for Mr Biber, in an opening address to the jury, said the court would hear two different versions of events during the trial and he urged the jury members to listen carefully to both versions.

The trial before Judge Paul Smith continues.