Bouncer murdered pub patron, court rules

A 152 kg former bouncer and trained fighter has been found guilty of murder for the death of the man he shoved through a second-storey window in a Perth hotel.

Stefan Schmidt received a guilty determination on Wednesday for the incident, which occurred May 8, 2011 in the Ocean Beach Hotel in upmarket Collesloe.

Schmidt’s barrister, Thomas Percy QC, could not comment on the case to TheShout, but declared "it was not over" with the handing down of the verdict.

In his closing comments to the court, Percy said "this was not an unlawful attack" and blamed the non-use of safety glass in the hotel’s window.

Jill Stiely, of Perth builder-architect Habitat 1, said building codes in WA do not always call for retrospective compliance, and there would be a lot of buildings in WA that don’t comply to current code.

"Western Australia has only recently [this year] required design compliance certification from an independent surveyor, which brings it in line with the rest of the country," she told TheShout.

Schmidt’s lawyer, Malcolm Ayoub, could not be contacted and management of the Ocean Beach Hotel declined to comment.

Source: The Shout, 22 June 2012