Tough minimum sentencing laws mean Grant “Grub” Coleman faces a minimum sixteen years if found guilty of killing the surf star.

The man arrested over the alleged one-punch killing of the wildly talented surf prodigy Chris Davidson has been hit with a second charge of “intentionally choking a person without consent”. 

Davidson, forty-five, was allegedly punched in the face by Grant “Grub” Coleman outside the South West Rocks Country Club at around eleven pm on Saturday, September 24. Davo fell, hit his head on the pavement, lights out. It’s such a common event in Australia, a country that has wrestled with violent booze-fuelled attacks for its modern existence, that many bars now feature sponge rubber outside their doors.

Sources close to BeachGrit allege the pair had a run-in at the bar and that Coleman was allegedly thrown out by the club’s security.

Anyway, paramedics treated Davo at the scene and he was taken to Kempsey Hospital but pronounced dead a short time later.

Coleman, a junior footy coach in the coastal hamlet five hours north of Sydney, was arrested at his nearby home thirty minutes after the attack and hit with the initial charge of “assaulting Davidson causing his death.”

Coleman, who is forty-two, was refused bail and has been remanded to Sydney’s notorious Silverwater prison. 

Last time I was at there visiting a pal another inmate was getting murdered. As I strolled out of the gates, happy to feel the sun on my face and with the freedom to jump in a car and drive thirty clicks back to the beach, an ambulance was roaring into the compound to pick up the bloodied corpse. 

Many years earlier, I visited the Surf Travel Co founder turned drug smuggler Paul King at the same prison.

Gonna be tough for Coleman. 

The charge of “assault causing death” is one of those rare offences where minimum sentences apply, the law coming into play after a series of highly publicised attacks where men were killed after being belted, all late at night, all alcohol fuelled. 

If Coleman pleads guilty or found guilty of “assault causing death” he faces a max of twenty years in prison, twenty-five, if he was intoxicated, with a minimum sixteen year total sentence, eight of ‘em in full-time custody. 

Kelly Slater, who famously lost to Davo in two consecutive heats at Bells Beach in 1996, wrote “Lost another soldier yesterday. One of the most naturally talented surfers I ever knew.”

But no sign of wave-creating virtuoso Cheyne Magnusson nor his guy-pal, the hot Hawaiian eye-candy Kalani Robb!

Two years ago, the world’s best surfers were lining up to jiggle their thumb tips against the Palm Springs Surf Club’s pygmy dingus, a proto-wavepool built on the site of the old Wet N Wild in that storied little desert town. 

Wet N Wild was the pool used in the opening sequences of North Shore, a film from 1987 that tells the fictional tale of Rick Kane, a boy who learns to surf in a wavepool and then attempts to transpose his skills to Pipeline with mostly good results.

The surfing world quickly fell under the spell of the Hawaiian surfer Cheyne Magnusson who had singlehandedly altered the course of aerial surfing at BSR cable park in Waco.

Magunusson joined hands with the “godfather of artificial waves” Tom Lochtefeld and his Surf Loch tech to soup up the ancient Wet N Wild site.

“I come in and play the piano,” Cheyne told me of his role complementing the wave tech. “Give me a bunch of knobs to move water and I can make it sing.”

The pint-sized proto was built and surfers, including Mason Ho, Jackson Dorian etc, came from all over the world, flared and made clips. The pool was then demolished to make way for the full-sized tank.

Now? 

Crickets, as they say. 

The PSSC Instagram account is blank, Magnusson hasn’t posted about the tank in two years and hasn’t responded to messages from BeachGrit re: the project, the pool’s creative director Jamo Wills hasn’t posted about the tank since November 2o2o, Kalani Robb, also involved in the joint, hasn’t posted about the tank in a year. 

It’s Facebook page is, to be generous, perfunctory, fifteen likes, zero followers. 

Worried that the joint has been shelved, although not shelved in the sexy sense, I contacted Thomas J Lochtefeld who reassured me the PSSC will be ready to be filled at the beginning of 2023. 

Lochtefeld also offered me a free flight to dance on his waves in the coming American spring. 

“Are you game?” he asked.

“Yes, daddy,” I said, lips parted, eyes closed, ripe for the act.

As for Magnusson, Lochtefeld says he’s still consulting for Surf Loch.

“He is a phenomenal wave composer, a virtuoso on our equipment.”