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A BRIGHT man suffered a spinal cord injury that paralysed both his legs after being stabbed in the lower back during a fight between two families, the County Court at Wangaratta has heard.
Shannon Larry Orcher, 20, is on trial, accused of stabbing Daniel Robinson three times and his father Alan Robinson seven times, in the early hours of October 4, 2009.
Orcher’s lawyer says his client acted in self-defence in attacking the pair, while prosecutors insist the Eurobin man intentionally set out to seriously injure the two men.
A 13-person jury was empanelled for the trial yesterday morning and given an outline of the facts of the case by prosecutor David O’Doherty.
He told the court Orcher and his brother Cheyne Orcher had visited the Robinson home after they left the Alpine Hotel in Bright when it closed at 1am.
Orcher allegedly told a friend of the Robinsons, Mathew Walsh, he was going to “bash” Daniel Robinson and have sex with his sister, Jessica Robinson.
At 3am, the Robinson siblings had arrived at their Cobden Street home after their night out at the same hotel when Daniel Robinson said he heard footsteps coming down the driveway and the Orcher brothers yelling they were going to kill him, rape his sister and burn down the house.
Mr Robinson woke up his father and the pair said they went out in a car to find the Orchers “to talk to them and calm the situation down”.
But the court heard yesterday the Robinsons were met with aggression and verbal abuse when they met Shannon Orcher, his brother and another relative in the driveway of the Orcher brothers’ home.
Police said a fight broke out between the men, both inside and outside the house.
They allege Orcher stabbed Alan Robinson seven times in the back and shoulders in the bedroom of the house, before stomping on his face and choking him to the point that he started to lose consciousness.
Orcher is alleged to have then walked out of the house and stabbed Daniel Robinson in the lower back three times, causing immediate paralysis to both his legs.
Police say the accused then left the scene and went to Beau Orcher’s Coronation Avenue unit, where he hid the knife, took off his blood-stained shirt and washed blood off his arms.
He later showed to police the shirt and knife, which he had hidden under a mattress in a couch, and admitted to stabbing both Robinson men, although he said they were both inside his house at the time of the stabbing.
Orcher told police he “lost it” and “I didn’t mean to ... do so much but I tried to stop them”.
The court heard both Robinson men had been armed, the father with a piece of a broom handle and the son with a cricket bat but the Orcher men didn’t report receiving any injuries in the incident.
Orcher’s lawyer said his client injured the Robinson men “to stop them” — an act of self-defence.
