10 Sep 2012

Bouncer gets life sentence for NZ man's murder

7:15 pm on 10 September 2012

An Australian bouncer has been sentenced to life in jail for murdering a New Zealand man by pushing him out of a second-storey hotel window in Perth.

Stefan Schmidt was found guilty in June this year after a trial in which he did not deny pushing Andrew Marshall through the window of the Ocean Beach Hotel in Cottesloe in May 2011.

Schmidt, a 26-year-old associate of the Rock Machine bikie gang, had claimed the death was an accident, the ABC reports.

During the trial, prosecutors told the court Mr Marshall had been talking to two women when Schmidt, in a fit of rage, grabbed him and and propelled him through the window. The women were friends of the accused.

Schmidt told the court he had pushed Mr Marshall to try to get him to go away, but never intended to cause him any harm. He said he was not paying any attention to the position of the windows.

A security guard testified that the man who fell to his death was given a fairly hard and forceful shove.

Schmidt will not be eligible for parole for 14 years.

"I think the punishment fits the crime in this situation ... I think the sentencing is also about keeping innocent people safe, and so the longer these people are away, the better it is."

Andrew Marshall was the cousin of Scott Guy, the Feilding farmer shot dead in 2010.