A Sydney actor accused of murdering a man with a samurai sword can’t recall striking the fatal blow but remembers his desperate need to save his girlfriend, a jury has heard.
Blake Thomas Davis, 31, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Jett McKee shortly after the intruder fled Davis’ Forest Lodge unit in August 2018.
Davis, who played minor roles in TV comedies Housos and Fat Pizza, told the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday he woke up on the ground at the unit’s front door unable to see with his left eye and to the sounds of Hannah Quinn’s screams near the road.
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Believing he’d been shot in the face by the gun McKee had earlier pointed in his face, he thought she too was about to be shot.
“That was probably the biggest moment of terror for me because when I woke up, they weren’t there,” he told the Sydney jury.
“I remember thinking ‘I have to save Hannah, I have to save Hannah’ ... it was like an alarm going off in my head.”
Davis said he felt dizzy and fumbled as he grabbed a display sword he’d been given by his brother and ran out the door, following the sound of Quinn’s screams.
He found them in something of “a tussle or a wrestle” before Quinn began backing away.
“All I could think about was the gun and the terror she was going to be killed,” he said.
“She was still with the same guy who’d had a gun to her head. [There was a] fear that I needed to get her away from the gun.”
‘I didn’t mean to take a life away’
Davis said he didn’t have a clear memory of doing anything with the sword on August 10 but accepted he sliced into McKee’s skull.
He wept as he explained he felt “horrible, absolutely horrible” for taking a life.
“There’s no other word for it,” he said.
“It’s not something I meant to do, I didn’t mean to take a life away.
“It’s something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life, I just wanted to save her.”
The Crown alleges Quinn pulled McKee to his knees outside the Forest Lodge unit before Davis dealt the fatal blow.
Prosecutor Chris Taylor says there was no justification for the 30-year-old’s slaying “as unwanted ... as that home invasion and robbery must have been”.
Davis’ barrister, Margaret Cunneen SC, has argued he acted in defence of Quinn.
Acquitted in court
Quinn had faced a charge of murder herself. It was alleged she was part of a joint criminal enterprise to kill McKee, but the trial judge ordered her acquittal on Thursday morning on the basis there was legally no case to answer.
She has also pleaded not guilty to being an accessory after the fact.
Davis on Thursday said the couple didn’t go to police until August 13 out of fear the couple or their families would be killed.
While in the unit demanding the couple hand over all their money or die, the gun-toting intruder said “people” knew where their families lived and would kill them too, Davis said.
“It was more a situation that we could go to police at any time but if someone pulled a gun on us again, there wouldn’t be time to do anything,” he said.
The couple only learned late on August 11 that McKee had died, Davis said.
He said his facial injury, which he later learned was due to McKee’s punching him with knuckle-dusters, had caused permanent damage to his sight.
Davis’ evidence continues.