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Daniel Christie one-punch killing: Shaun McNeil jailed for at least seven and a half years Daniel Christie one-punch killing: Shaun McNeil jailed for at least seven and a half years
(about 1 hour later)
Shaun McNeil has been sentenced to at least seven and a half years for the one-punch killing of Sydney teenager Daniel Christie.Shaun McNeil has been sentenced to at least seven and a half years for the one-punch killing of Sydney teenager Daniel Christie.
McNeil delivered a single, unprovoked and ferocious blow to the 18-year-old’s face at Sydney’s Kings Cross on New Year’s Eve in 2013. Christie died 11 days later.McNeil delivered a single, unprovoked and ferocious blow to the 18-year-old’s face at Sydney’s Kings Cross on New Year’s Eve in 2013. Christie died 11 days later.
In sentencing him at the supreme court on Friday, Justice Robert Allan Hulme said McNeil had a mind addled by alcohol and completely misread the situation.In sentencing him at the supreme court on Friday, Justice Robert Allan Hulme said McNeil had a mind addled by alcohol and completely misread the situation.
More details to come ... “[He] gave vent to a perceived, but grossly mistaken need, to violently punish an innocent young man,” he said.
McNeil, Justice Hulme said, was trained in body building and UFC fighting and Christie was no match for him.
The court heard McNeil had been walking along Darlinghurst Road with his de facto wife, Sonya Walker, about 9pm when three teenagers approached and asked the pair if they wanted to buy drugs.
This sparked a row, with the 27-year-old McNeil punching and kicking one of the young boys.
Seeing the scuffle, Christie asked McNeil: “Why are you hitting kids?”
As McNeil confronted them, Christie’s elder brother, Peter, saw Christie take a step back, put his hands up and repeatedly say: “No”. Despite this passive stance, McNeil struck him in the face.
Daniel immediately went limp, falling back and hitting his head on the pavement, creating an audible cracking sound. McNeil then punched Peter.
Daniel was put into an induced coma, suffering seven strokes in one night and experiencing swelling down his spinal column and in his brain. Eleven days later his family decided to turn off the 18-year-old’s life support.
Speaking to his parents, Michael and Maureen, Hulme said “we are all the poorer” for the loss of a “remarkable young man”.
He found McNeil, who entered a guilty plea to manslaughter at the earliest available opportunity, had shown genuine remorse. But with his background of violent behaviour, Hulme could only find his prospect of rehabilitation as “reasonable”.
For the manslaughter of Daniel, the assault on the young boy and the assault on Peter, he sentenced McNeil to a maximum of 10 years. His earliest date of release is 2021.