Balcony 'fall' only option after brutal stabbing
LYING on the concrete outside his two-storey Urangan home, Robin Neville Drury felt the most comfortable and relaxed he had ever been in his life.
He recalls feeling like he was bathing in the warm November sunshine without a trace of pain throughout his body.
But it was, in fact, overcast and rainy on November 18, 2008, and the then-23 year old was weak from immense blood loss.
He had just allegedly been stabbed between 13-15 times with a kitchen knife and jumped off his balcony to escape his knife-wielding flatmate.
Eric Roger Frederick Heuer has pleaded not guilty in the Brisbane Supreme Court to attempting to murder Mr Drury and fellow flatmate Rodney Michael Pettitt, then 20 years old.
Mr Drury recounted in court yesterday the terror he awoke to on November 18, 2008.
He said he was asleep on the couch and woke up to someone pressing down on his back.
He said he felt blows to his neck and yelled out for Heuer, who he thought had been asleep on the adjacent couch, for help.
"I thought it was an intruder..." he said.
When Mr Drury rolled over he was faced with Heuer, allegedly wielding a knife from the kitchen of the Charleton Esplanade unit.
Mr Drury said he tried to escape through a door, which was locked, before attempting to flee up the stairs.
"I was not very strong. I had lost a lot of blood and I did not have the capacity to flee quickly up the stairs," Mr Drury told the court.
Mr Drury said he looked back to see Heuer chuckling.
"I was standing there bloodied, naked... and he laughed," an emotional Mr Drury recounted.
Mr Drury said he managed to get to the top of the stairs, after being stabbed again, where friend Mr Pettitt got in between Mr Drury and the attacker.
Mr Pettitt told the court he pushed Mr Drury into his bedroom and shut the door.
Mr Drury went onto the balcony and weighed up his options.
"It's no exaggeration to say I was 100% sure that death was imminent," he said.
"I thought if I was to attempt escape I thought I had to go over this (balcony)," he said.
With no strength to push himself over the railing, Mr Drury claimed he simply tipped his body over and fell on the concrete below.
"I was lying there and I was quite peaceful," he told the jury in Heuer's trial.
"The fear had even evaporated..."
He said he managed to crawl to a neighbours house, where he found Mr Pettitt seeking refuge inside.
During cross-examination rom Heuer's barrister, Jack Pappas, Mr Drury confirmed he did not notice anything odd about Heuer before the attack and did not see him use illicit drugs.
The court heard Heuer had told people he was a former SAS soldier who served and was wounded in Afghanistan.
The trial continues.
