By Marta Pascual Juanola and Louise Rennie
The family of a Northbridge nightclub manager who was killed in a ‘one-punch’ attack in July last year say they have been robbed of justice after his convicted killer was sentenced to fewer than eight years in jail.
Paramount boss Giuseppe ‘Peppe’ Raco was attacked outside a fast food outlet on Northbridge’s James Street in the early hours of July 4 while trying to break up an argument between patrons.
Giuseppe Raco, the manager of Paramount nightclub in Perth, died after a coward punch at a fast-food outlet in July.
He was punched in the back of the head and stumbled several metres before losing consciousness but never woke again. His wife was five months pregnant with their second daughter at the time.
On Wednesday, 26-year-old Jaylen Dimer was sentenced to seven years and six months behind bars over the callous attack, which the judge described as “a terrible example of alcohol-fuelled violence”.
Speaking to Nine News Perth outside of WA’s Supreme Court, Mr Raco’s father, Domenic, said no sentence would bring his son back but the outcome of the proceedings was unfair.
“Why did my son get killed? Why? For nothing, because he went to work to bring some food on the table for his little kids,” he said.
“How am I going to feel when I see [Dimer] walking around with his family in five years’ time, and I look at my little grandkids and they have to grow up without a dad?”
Inside the courtroom, Mr Rico’s wife, Vincenza Raco, laid bare the pain of having to turn her husband’s life support off in hospital and taking her newborn daughter to Fremantle cemetery to see her father’s grave.
“How do you choose a time to stop your husband’s heart from beating? I couldn’t. I asked the hospital staff to choose a time,” Ms Raco told the court.
Jaylen Dimer.
“There are no words to describe the pain and heartache. My family has been destroyed by the hands of someone else.”
Mr Raco’s death sent ripples through Perth and saw dozens of friends and family members take to social media to share touching tributes to the “beautiful person” and family man, who had left his native Calabria in Italy’s south-west to come and work in Australia.
“Words can’t express how sad this makes me,” one person wrote. “I knew him as a little boy, as a young man he looked after me when I went to Italy, I went to his beautiful wedding.”
Another lamented not having been able to travel to Perth in March to visit the 40-year-old due to the COVID-19 pandemic, adding “it took little to understand what a beautiful person” he was.
Dimer, who has a long history of alcohol-fuelled violence, was originally charged with causing grievous bodily harm over the attack, but the charge was later upgraded to manslaughter.
He will be 32 by the time he is eligible for parole.