SA court lifts suppression order on identities of four men accused of killing drug trafficker Victor Codea outside Adelaide High School

Four men can finally be identified after they were ordered to stand trial over the killing of an alleged drug trafficker in an Adelaide High School car park.

Victor Codea was allegedly bashed to death by a group of men in the car park of Adelaide High School. Picture: SA Police.

Alleged drug trafficker Victor Codea was punched and kicked to death by four men who lured him to the car park of Adelaide High School, a court has heard.

For the first time, The Advertiser can name the quartet who, prosecutors allege, murdered Codea, 24, of Ridleyton, in August last year after longstanding suppression orders were lifted.

Jeremy Dale Sandell, 23, Kain Mazomenos, 24, Thomas Nichols, 30 and Thomas Pinnington, 23, have each pleaded not guilty to one count of murder.

They were arrested and charged first with assault offences, and then with murder after Codea’s life support was switched off following eight days in a comatose state.

At the time of the incident, Codea had yet to plead to one count of trafficking in a controlled drug, and one count of trafficking in a commercial quantity of a controlled drug.

Those offences allegedly occurred at Klemzig and Adelaide on May 4 last year and involved four other men – none of whom are accused of his murder.

In the Adelaide Magistrates Court on Tuesday, counsel for Pinnington asked he be released on home detention bail, arguing the case against him was weak.

They claimed their client was “simply in the wrong place at the wrong time” – an assertion rejected by prosecutors.

They said the ambush was organised by Sandell and Mazomenos, the latter of whom involved Nichols and Pinnington in the incident.

Kain Mazomenos. Picture: Facebook.

Codea, they said, was driven to the high school’s car park by Sandell – who had a woman in the back of the car – and met by a car containing the other three men.

They said Pinnington and Nichols approached the passenger side of Sandell’s car and struck Codea “repeatedly to the head”, then “kicked him a number of times to the head”.

The woman in the back of the car, they said, had given a witness statement while police had found Pinnington’s fingerprints and palm print on the roof of the car.

Magistrate Elizabeth Sheppard said she was “not persuaded” Pennington should be released on bail.

She remanded him, Sandell, Mazomenos and Nichols in custody to face the Supreme Court in July.

Originally published as SA court lifts suppression order on identities of four men accused of killing drug trafficker Victor Codea outside Adelaide High School