Chilling ‘guttural sounds’ heard in phone recording ‘prove victim was attacked before she plunged from killer’s balcony’
Warriena Wright pleaded with her date just minutes before her tragic death when she fell 14 floors from a flat in Australia, a court heard
PROSECUTORS say a woman was "strangled" by her Tinder date moments before she plunged to her death from a fourteenth floor balcony.
Warriena Wright, 26, died after falling from the fourteenth-storey apartment of Gable Tostee in Gold Coast city, Queensland, Australia.
The incident happened hours after they had met on the dating app and had sex on August 8, 2014.
Tostee, 30, is accused of murder and has pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors argue a Tostee used "threatening and intimidating” behaviour which caused Ms Wright’s death by locking her on the balcony after a violent confrontation inside his apartment and giving her no other option but to attempt to flee by climbing over the balustrade.
But the defence team said though Ms Wright’s death was a tragedy, Mr Tostee was not to blame.
On day five of the trial, both prosecution and defence delivered their closing arguments to Brisbane Supreme Court, Australia.
Prosecutor Glen Cash alleged Tostee strangled the New Zealand tourist after she threw decorative rocks at him during the night of drinking and sex.
In the chilling audio played in court, Tostee tells Ms Wright she doesn't "understand anything" while guttural noises can be heard in the background.
But defence barrister Saul Holt QC said the noises heard in the recording came after Tostee was forced to restrain Ms Wright after she became erratic.
He told jurors: “That sequence of events is a desperate tragedy but it is not murder and it is not manslaughter.
“Just because somebody is dead does not in itself mean someone is criminally responsible for that death.”
He argued Tostee’s act of locking her on the balcony, rather than an act of intimidation, was in fact a bid to defuse the violent situation between them.
“Gable Tostee was lawfully permitted to restrain Ms Wright because she attacked him with rocks ... he was acting to remove a disorderly person from his property and the law says you can do that,” he said.
“Locking her on the balcony, shutting and locking the door was an act of de-escalation ... to intervene, an act that created safety, in essence, for both of them.
“How can the locking have been intimidation when there is nothing to indicate she knew he locked the door?”
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Mr Holt said it was Ms Wright who continually attacked his client and that his response to her was measured.
“Her behaviour becomes increasingly erratic over the course of the night,” he said.
“It goes well past drunk in relation to a number of conversations.
“There are things she says and things she does that are really, really strange.
“There is a randomness, unpredictability, might I say, irrationality to her behaviour that goes beyond ordinary drunkenness.
“Gable Tostee is patient with it. She’s hitting him, throwing things at him, she’s saying the weirdest stuff.
“She says, ‘I will f***ing destroy your jaw,’ and his response is patient ... gentlemanly even.
“He responds in ways that are perfectly appropriate to Warriena Wright’s increasingly odd and erratic behaviour.”
Crown prosecutor Mr Cash told jurors that the sheer terror in Wright’s voice just before Tostee locked her on his balcony made him as culpable for her death as if he had pushed her off.
“It was terror bordering on hysteria ... what was it that must have occurred to prompt that kind of response by her,” he said.
“You hear her saying repeatedly, ‘let me go home, let me go home’.”
Parts of an audio recording made by Tostee of the night Ms Wright was inside his apartment have been played to the jury as part of Mr Cash’s closing address.
Once again, Ms Wright’s terrified screams of “no, no no, no, no” and “let me go home” pierced the courtroom.
“He has caused her death as much as if he had pushed her from the balcony himself,” Mr Cash said.
“Her state of terror is unmistakably proven in the recording.”
Mr Cash said Ms Wright, who had been locked out on the balcony without any of her possessions, after Tostee had previously restrained her forcibly, threatened to knock her out and to throw her off the balcony, clearly felt climbing over the balcony was her only option.
“What would drive Warriena Wright to attempt such a thing in the early hours of August 8,” he said.
“The prosecution says ... fear. Fear of the defendant, fear of Gable Tostee, fear of what he would do to her if he let her back inside.
“What abject terror would drive Warriena Wright to risk such a manoeuvre ... to climb off the balcony?
“She couldn’t get assistance using the telephone, that left her with two options: to go back in to engage with the man who had violently restrained her ... who had not let her go home.
“In light of what she had done and what she feared he would do, her only reasonable option, the only remaining option was to climb down the balcony, out of fear for what he would do if she came back in contact with her.”
During the trial, parts of the date between Tostee and Ms Wright were recorded on a phone owned by Tostee was played to the jurors.
More than 40 minutes of CCTV footage from the night Ms Wright died was shown and the pair's Tinder conversation and text messages were also tendered in the trial.
Selfies of the two were taken on the fateful night, were also revealed.
Tostee, who has been charged with murder but could face a lesser charge of manslaughter, elected not to take the stand in his murder trial or call any defence witnesses following the closing case against him.