Sydney wife questions husband's attacker
After watching her husband lying in a coma for 19 days and then seeing the man who punched him explain his actions in a Sydney
court, Danielle Taiba is still left asking "why?".
Security guard Fadi "Fred" Taiba suffered a traumatic brain injury and had to have part of his skull removed after James Ian
Longworth felled him at Bar 333 on George St in September 2013.
Longworth was on Monday found not guilty of intentionally inflicting grievous bodily harm but a jury found him guilty of the lesser
charge of recklessly causing grievous bodily harm.
Speaking after the verdict, Mrs Taiba said she has watched Longworth throughout the trial.
"I have studied you ... your hands, picturing your fists clenched as they were the night you chose to use them as a weapon," she told
reporters.
"I have sat behind you for the last two weeks. You have shown no fear and no remorse.
"Why is it when you felt sad thinking of your deceased father you decided to king hit my husband and run?"
The crown described the blow as a haymaker, with fellow security guard George Linardos recalling how he heard a loud slapping noise
before seeing Mr Taiba fall to the ground.
"I'd never seen anything at all like that before. I was scared," Mr Linardos told the jury.
But Longworth, who admitted throwing the punch, always denied he intended to cause Mr Taiba really serious harm.
The 34-year-old told his trial last week that at the time of the "incident" he had been grappling with his father's death in June that
year.
Longworth explained how he was living in the UK when his father died and never got a chance to say goodbye.
So when on September 5, 2013 he was told a crematorium had lost his father's ashes he was "heartbroken".
This was still playing on his mind when the next night he ran into friends at Concourse Bar near Wynyard and had 10 schooners.
When the group went to the nearby Bar 333, Longworth was denied entry.
"Any other night I would probably have just laughed and walked away," Longworth told the jury.
Instead, he protested, and - "overwhelmed" about his dad and knowing his night was over "lashed out".
Longworth, who later described the punch as a tap to police, because he was in disbelief about the "whole situation" and "couldn't
believe he had hit someone".
Longworth, who remains on bail, is set to return to court on December 11 for sentencing proceedings.
He and his mother had applied for the CCTV footage of the punch not to be published but it was released to the media on Monday.
