NSW: Pub noise complaint leads to assault

Daily Telegraph, May 2007

BOXER Solomon Haumono's father has been charged over a fight outside a Sydney pub which left one man fighting for his life and another seriously hurt.

Maile Haumono, 56, a former heavyweight champion who once sparred with legend Joe Frazier, was arrested near General Gordon Hotel in Sydenham at the weekend.

A 52-year-old western Sydney man suffered severe head injuries and was yesterday fighting for his life in Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. Doctors operated to remove swelling on his brain and he was yesterday in an induced coma. A 45-year-old Lakemba man will need plastic surgery to a cut lip and other facial injuries.

The fight is understood to have started about 9pm on Friday over a noise complaint about the two men, who were sitting outside the hotel.

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Qld: Tunnel takes its toll

Courier Mail
May 05, 2007

JOHN Harris says he bought his wooden two-storey home in Bowen Hills five years ago because it was close to transport and located in a "quiet street".

The area is anything but quiet now, having become a transport focal point. His home is located near the northern end of the North-South Bypass Tunnel

Like other residents there and at the southern end of the tunnel near Woolloongabba, he bears the brunt of Brisbane's $3 billion construction project with drilling, blasting and trucks rumbling by or beeping with reverse alarms ...

Traffic rumbles past his home now since tunnel work diverted vehicles to his small street.

"When the trucks go past you can't hear, you can't talk," the 68-year-old retiree says.

It gets so loud he has trouble hearing a complaints phone hotline for the joint venture 4.8km tunnel, which is being overseen by RiverCity Motorway.

Residents such as Mr Harris have made almost 160 complaints to the hotline since work began eight months ago.

The complaints, documents of some earlier ones having been obtained via freedom of information laws, range from pipe damage to excessive dust and work starting too early ...

"Workmen starting before 6.30am. This is waking him up," was one complaint recorded in September.

Preparation work was being done for a sound wall but it was "not completed when promised" because "sub-contractors failed to supply materials to continue work" ...

Other complaints are about trucks using roads. It got so frustrating that one resident threatened to stand in the street ...

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NSW: Rugby star knifed in karaoke brawl

Daily Telegraph
February, 2007

Thomas Pritchard, 20, remains in a critical condition in Liverpool Hospital after being stabbed twice in the heart.

The brawl - between several members of the Pritchard family, who are Maori, and 10 Asian males - is thought to have begun at a Liverpool unit block about 3.30am after a dispute over loud music ...

Police inquiries indicate the Pritchards and several relatives confronted a large group having a party at the unit after being summoned by a woman relative.

The woman, who lived in the block, claimed she had been threatened when she asked her next-door neighbours to turn down their music.

"They refused ... so she called all the boys over,'' Ms Mapusua said.

Source

Sydney Morning Herald
February 2007

It's understood the Pritchards' sister was so terrified after being confronted in the corridor outside her apartment she telephoned both her brothers and two other relatives.

Sources said a knife was held at her throat during the ensuing altercation ...

Source

NSW: Murdered for wanting quiet

Sydney Morning Herald
January 7, 2007

A YOUNG father was stabbed to death after he asked a group of rowdy pubgoers to be quiet because he had to get up early for work.

Sione Matavesi, 22, was asleep at a friend's house in Mount Pritchard at 1.30am yesterday when a group of people standing in the street outside woke him up.

The group, who apparently had been drinking at a nearby hotel, had been arguing and yelling at the top of the driveway of the North Liverpool Road house, witnesses said ...

Sam Wraide, who lives in the house opposite where the attack took place, said the victim left the house and told the group to be quiet.

"He said to them to keep the noise down," Mr Wraide said. "He told them that he had to start work at 6am and needed to get some sleep." The group then turned on the victim, punching and kicking him, before he was stabbed several times in the chest and head.

He was treated at the scene by ambulance officers and taken to Liverpool Hospital but died soon after ...

NSW Police Minister John Watkins said yesterday he would look at ways of curbing the rising number of street attacks ...

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