Andy Marshall was fatally hurt when he was thrown through the window of a West Australian bar in 2011. Photo / NZ Herald
Andy Marshall was fatally hurt when he was thrown through the window of a West Australian bar in 2011. Photo / NZ Herald
The Napier parents of a man pushed to his death through a second-storey pub window are "battered and bruised" after a retrial found their son's killer guilty of manslaughter.
Musician Andy Marshall, 29, was talking to a woman at Perth's Cottesloe's Ocean Beach Hotel in 2011 when rugby league playerStefan Pahia Schmidt shoved him through a full-length window.
Schmidt, who admitted pushing Mr Marshall but claimed he didn't mean to kill him, was found guilty of murder in 2012 and jailed for a minimum of 14 years.
However, three West Australian Court of Appeal judges unanimously determined in August last year that Schmidt would face a retrial, with Justice Michael Buss saying he could have been found guilty of manslaughter instead of murder.
Andy Marshall's parents, Alan and Wendy Marshall, travelled to Perth from their Napier home for a judge-alone retrial in the Supreme Court of Western Australia on May 19.
Justice John Roderick McKechnie yesterday acquitted Schmidt of murder but found him guilty of manslaughter.
Last night he was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment.
The couple had braced themselves for the gruelling nature of the retrial, which was expected to have a heightened focus on the injuries leading to their son's death.
Mr Marshall told Hawke's Bay Today the couple were accepting of Schmidt's sentence yesterday but there were elements of the retrial they had not agreed with.
"We definitely respect the decision the judge has made," he said. "We don't agree with all the findings. We don't agree with everything, but we'll just have to accept it."
He said it would have been a mistake for them to go to the retrial looking for satisfaction or closure.
"It's never going to be enough to bring closure for us. I don't think we'll ever get closure."
The delivering of the couple's victim impact statements before yesterday's sentencing had been "very emotional".
"We feel battered and bruised. It takes a greater toll than you realise." The Marshalls planned to take time out with Mr Marshall's brother in Brisbane before coming home. At the opening of the retrial 11 days ago, Schmidt offered to plead guilty to the lesser charge but prosecutors rejected the plea deal.
Andy Marshall was a cousin of slain Feilding farmer Scott Guy, who was shot in his driveway in 2010.
