Grant Coleman sentenced over death of surf star Chris Davidson
One punch, two ruined lives. Grant Coleman, left, sentenced to three-to-five for the killing of Narrabeen surf prodigy Chris Davidson.

Surf star Chris Davidson and his “executioner” Grant Coleman “both living on past glories” says judge

“I must say I do not doubt many in the local community would have agreed with (Coleman). Mr Davidson was more than a pest."

A little earlier today, news that Chris Davidson’s killer had been sentenced to three-to-five years in prison for the unlawful death in 2022 of the surf star outside the grandly named South West Rocks Country Club.

Chris Davidson, who was forty-five, was knocked unconscious by Grant “Grub” Coleman, a forty-three-year-old former rugby star, around eleven pm, treated at the scene and taken to Kempsey Hospital but pronounced dead a short time later.

In Newcastle District Court on Friday, Judge Peter McGrath was unsparing in his criticism of the men describing them as “both living on past glories.” 

Coleman, he said, believed he was the “unofficial sheriff” of the small coastal town and had a fixation with Chris Davidson following the surf star’s conviction in 2017 of indecently assaulting a fifteen-year-old girl. 

Coleman saw Chris Davidson approach a nineteen-year-old girl at the bar, kiss her on both cheeks, tell her she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen and then offer to take her to France, at which point Coleman started yelling,  “You’re a pedeophile!”

It all went to hell and finished outside, Chris Davidson dead on the footpath.

“Mr Coleman felt justified in his attitude towards Mr Davidson,” said McGrath. 

“He felt justified in taking the law into his own hands. He felt justified in punching Mr Davidson to the head. In Mr Coleman’s world view, he was something like the unofficial sheriff of South West Rocks and he determined who was and who was not acceptable for the town. 

“I must say I do not doubt many in the local community would have agreed with him. Mr Davidson was more than a pest.

“He was, to Mr Coleman’s knowledge and belief, a serious and repeat abuser of young females. He had physically and emotionally abused a friend of Mr Coleman’s and damaged her property and traumatised her two young children but Mr Coleman took the law into his own hands.

“He was judge and jury of Mr Davidson. Tragically, Mr Coleman also became Mr Davidson’s executioner.” 

Grant Coleman has been in custody since the fracas and will be eligible for parole in a year-and-a-half.

Small towns, eh?

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Black-Haired Andy

Each individual is solely responsible for their actions, and every action will produce a reaction.
Include some alcohol, other mind-altering products, & testosterone.
Stand back a safe distance & watch…………………

Barrelled

You gotta wonder if Chad and Dez look at BG before they post an article that covers exactly what the other wrote 24 hours earlier.

The Bitchy Crab

Sometimes, not always, yes in this case. Felt there was a still a little fruit left on the tree.

Truth

Fact checker for ya yanky mate

Barrelled

Nobody beats a hide like BG.

Doobalachy

Pretty cheap manslaughter sentence, regardless of the circumstances it should be 10 yrs min.

AI (for ever) .

I agree but I don’t believe the police prosecutor’s pushed real hard in this case.
As the judge indicated most locals were happy he had been murdered.

Kinda saids a lot, eh?

Sean Connery

Ahhh.. There you are. Thought you changed your name to A.I. Dora.

deeks

I agree,the police should have been prosecuted for their later stuff. Total shit…

Truth

Fact checker for ya yanky surf hating mate

Kennypowersmullet

Davo was a drunk pest and a massive creep.
He was no one to be praised.
Sucks he died.
Only dumb cunts lord creeps though. Whether they surfed well in a past life or not.

LONGBEACH4417

Reminds me of everyone sucking Jay Adams cock because of who he was, despite directly causing the death of someone because they liked dudes and not chicks. Pathetic, he is still celebrated.

Kennypowersmullet

Can’t say I know much about jay but I don’t doubt.
Most pro surfers etc from back in the day were or are still Cunts.
The more I got to be around them the more I realised they weren’t to be lorded like the mags told us we should.

deeks

Who’s jail Adams?

Brutus

pity you didn’t know Jay , and understand his life and how he died a Christian ….flawed genius’s are still celebrated as they contributed something positive in their life!

Jimmy the Saint

I would rather have a guy like Coleman as my next door neighbor than Davidson!

deeks

Move to broadmeadows,you’ll have one either side of you

Chazz Michael Michaels

Small town story from yesterday: the local thug charged with attempted murder.

He and another guy (kid I taught a few years ago, tragically) smoking crack and became convinced someone who lives near them was bugging their phones/spying on them. (All completely in their heads, guy was in his own home minding his business.)

So they march round, tie him up, take him back to theirs and beat shit out of him for hours. Try to cut off his ear, gouge one of his eyes out, then pour something over him that’s blinded him. Local thug carries all this out while the young guy films. Eventually they put him in the loft because they think he’s dead.

What I guess happened next is the young guy leaves in the morning and goes straight to the police with the video, totally freaked out. Police turn up expecting a body but find the guy is still alive, just.

Local thug already charged, which is why I suspect they must’ve had the video evidence.

Good enough for him. It won’t be his first time in jail and no doubt not the last we’ll see of him, but at least he’ll be gone for a good stint.

Truth

What episode of animal kingdom is this. Your junkies watch way to much tv in Cali & play to much Gta5

Barrelled

I don’t think JP lives in California.

Truth

Anywhere in America is shit

Barrelled

Yeah, not from there either

Derek Hynd's Missing Fins

No wonder you’re so depressed all the time, if those are your neighbors. Or maybe it’s where you live, that makes you all depressed? On a more serious note, has fentanyl gotten to you yet? Meth x 1000….destroying the US now. Crack, heroin, even meth, all going the way of the dodo, as fentanyl is cheap, easy to produce, and easy to get. Can get dusted on any other drug, too, including marijuana, making instant addicts. Fucked up, all of it.

Chazz Michael Michaels

Well there’s been a few weird things and freak outs with this dose of crack that’s around the town just now, so there’s something off about it. Fentanyl was my suspicion.

Swampgoat

Sounds like a story from Irvine Welsh’s “Acid House”.

Sellme fitzgobbins

Is this in Aus?

Chazz Michael Michaels

Nah, Scotland

Eddie Haiku

You’ve got it all wrong
Small towns don’t rape young women
Sick men do that work

Kahzi

A classic example of unjustified entitlement.
The judge is correct. The sentencing, and death is beside the point, but reason enough for BG et al to “comment”.
Davo – and his reportedly other-worldly surfing talent – was taught via 90’s era surf mythology that he was a golden god, and had “earned” the right to exorcise his sexual proclivities unhindered by the personal safety and space of the girls he targeted. This delusion is played out in the myriad of male self-perception emboldened by a good to excellent period of performance in any given male-dominated sport. Or business field…etc etc.
Grub felt he “owned” the women folk of SWR, in as much as he felt it was his role to protect his “property”. This is as abhorrent as sexual harassment in that it invokes the delusion that has Grub – in his own mind – as the hero. The problem is that the personal safety and space of the people he purports to protect is demonstrably secondary to the theatrical violence that reinforces his self-image. Any benefit to women’s safety – if it exists at all – is merely a by-product of him acting out a pantomime of who he thinks he is.
Anyone paying attention would understand that the problem driving this tragic outcome is systemic.

Ramathorn

He also looks like ALF the alien

Jimmy the Saint

He reminds me a little of a younger version of Alf from Home and Away!

Truth

Alfs rape dungeon. Now that’s fucking some funny shit

A.I. Dora

Yes, yes, all men are cunts, yada yada…

Kahzi

Well at least we know you are a cunt

A.I. Dora

Which do you find harder, being so angry, so woke, or so self righteous? Because only a complete twat would jump on here and somehow make this about men’s entitlement.

Kahzi

Except there is an element where both these men’s choices are about the entitlement they felt to even have the opportunity to make them

Being a cunt is a choice… choose not to be one.

Truth

As well written a comment I’ve not seen on this napkin but, what’s your point?

Kahzi

The point is that there are things enabled in these men which are uniquely available to a certain group of people. There is a tacit understanding that “men” have the roles these odious individuals took to criminal extremes… and got caught. The statistically supported systemic inequality allowed nascent dysfunction to flourish.
There’ll always be cunts… sure… but it’s not too much to expect our systems to block cunts as effectively as possible.

Barrelled

Khazi be sounding like a man-hater

Kahzi

Barrelled be sounding like a cunt enabler

Corey Webster

Loved the read and criticisms leveled. Didn’t jump to the vague or generalized conclusion that the cause was “systemic” though. What “system” beyond each of these guys inflated ego’s should be blamed? Systems that reward performance in Davos case? What about the other guys bs sense of heroism? Look at how broad hero’s journey myths span across cultures. Fools are bound to distort their own place within their personal narratives to accommodate a bs sense of heroism, patriotism, whatever… Seems like natural human flaws are very much at play. There are plenty of people operating in a variety of systems not falling prey to those particular human shortcomings too.

Kahzi

I completely agree that they are responsible for their own actions.
That doesn’t mean we can’t consider how our societal normalisation enables the genesis of these delusions. Indeed, isn’t hero mythology merely another delusion?
After all, winning is just a subjective, revisionist story told to satisfy those who believe.
I am not suggesting our systems are not ubiquitous anthropological phenomena.
They are.
What I am saying is that flaws in those systems can only be addressed by an honest appraisal of their consequences

Corey Webster

I feel like deconstruction’s appeal to early 20’s college idealism leads to dishonest or skewed appraisals of a systems benefits and consequences and an assumption that systemic change can solve all of society’s problems.

Unfortunately free will still exists and some human beings will always see violence and abuse as a form of power (4-5 people out of 100 are sociopaths or worse). Also New societal structures won’t stop idiots from being idiots.

I live near a deeply progressive city where new idealistic “progressive” systemic changes and a lack of consequences have lead to an uptick in violent crime and a reinterpretation of property crime as essentially not being crime at all. The local left wing media will even reframe violent crime to minimize it (saw one local progressive website say “murders on the rise, it must be this summer heat”).It’s a completely dishonest interpretation of the consequences of their progressive systemic changes. These “progressives” (hard to call their policies progress sometimes) that used deconstruction to gain power have now created new power structures that financially benefit them. So dishonest interpretations of the consequences of their policies help them maintain their new positions of power.

Kahzi

Systemic change will never “solve all of society’s problems”, and that type of specious hyperbole can easily be dismissed.
There’s nothing new in a democracy utilising legislative instruments to modify sociocultural systems. Indeed, history has shown that this is the best way to appraise a “systems benefits or consequences”. The best legislation takes into account that idiots will still be idiots.
In the system I’ve identified, men have unjustified access to power. This can be demonstrated statistically. When idiots surf heaps good in the 90’s – and they’re blokes – they are given leeway where others are not. In fact, aberrant behaviours are often forgiven as “character”.
Hardly early 20’s college idealism… perhaps you are suffering from the aphorism that says the privileged see equality as oppression?

Corey Webster

I’m down for making systems better, but still they can only do so much. I don’t see equality as oppression. I see an objective rise in violence that’s come about through blind progressive idealism that looks no different than the oppressive systems that came before it. A lot of that violence is happening in historically disenfranchised communities. So n,o equality is not being created through these progressive policies, and many of the groups being harmed are the same.

Kahzi

Characterising my argument – here – as “blind progressive idealism” is not an accurate summation. An “objective rise in violence” attributed to the same is speculative correlation, at best. What about the measurable increase in the distance between the richest and poorest in society?
Also, casual mention of a very specific, and relatively rare, psychiatric disorder is disingenuous.

Corey Webster

In my experience NPD ain’t rare. The tactics they employ are widely used in politics, the work place, relationships, and day to day life. One of the current presidential candidates in the U.S. is a shining example of NPD.

I agree the extreme wealth gap can create societal ills. But the lack of consequences can also spur on crime.

Kahzi

There’s a difference between being a cunt and narcissistic personality disorder.
And there’s fucking cunts everywhere
From a statistical perspective, “rare” is measurable.
NPD is rare.

Corey Webster

Regardless, systemic change won’t change cunts and narcissists.

Corey Webster

Also people with narcissistic personality disorder feel extremely entitled, and inherently hold the belief that rules don’t apply to them regardless of what system they might be in, regardless of their position, standing, race, or ethnicity.

Kahzi

Systems can present blocks to cunts and any negative manifestation of mental illness.
They will never prevent these things, however, systems are designed to manage them.
Enabled men/boys – as described above – have had a measurable systemic advantage. If they are cunts or suffer from (for example) sociopathic tendency, they can get away with it. Some even become CEOs or world champions

Kennypowersmullet

Grub is no saint but he’d seen enough to be wary of the creep davo had become/was

Happy Camper

so was davo a pedo or what’s this whole thing about him and young girls?

Sellme fitzgobbins

he tried to root his mates 15year old daughter , got caught, charged
so yes pedo and just a cunt in general for doing something so low

Stanislav Franck

Exorcise his sexual proclivities? Like vomit them out a gimp ball-strangled mouth? Evacuate them out a plug-gorged anus? How does one exorcise sexual proclivities? Much less a celebrated rebel surfer without an education or two marbles between his ears?

Kahzi

In the way he has been enabled.
Sexual proclivities are – by definition – things we are compelled to do with our wedding tackle. There’s all sorts of power structure iterations that emerge, and most are relatively harmless. A better way is for them to manifest is as a truly felt, equitable sensual intimacy… but our humanity often gets in the way of ideal outcomes, especially when we are considering primitive aspects, like fucking.
However, our society venerates men/boys, who have a winning talent for just about anything, as privileged. You could argue it’s not their fault – especially those with limited cognitive abilities – but you’d be inadvertently arguing my point.
Seen through the lens of entitlement, all lesser examples of humanity are fair game to those that have societal reinforced specialness. In fact, such an individual would see that they were honouring their target merely by giving them their attention.
These delusions have a direct line to sociocultural systems hiding in plain sight.

Stanislav Franck

Too long mate. I was just commenting on your choice of exorcise over exercise.

Kahzi

And I chose that word deliberately

Happy Camper

this was premeditated (not in a griffin sort of way).
this guy was just looking for the opportunity. if Chris was on the piss and unable to defend himself, it’s murder.

when I see some guy accusing some other guy of sexual depravity I always go back to the old adage.
when you point your finger, three are pointing back at you.

Jimmy the Saint

Doesn’t sound premeditated to me! Certainly not murder either. Unintentional killing is manslaughter!

Happy Camper

that’s some serious exclamation points.

depends on what you consider premeditated.
sounds like this guy’s been planning to knock out Davo for a long time, and was looking for that opportunity.
the judge even says it. Davo abused one of Colemans friends and traumatized her kids so Coleman felt justified.
sounds like Coleman was out for a bit of vengeance.

a blow to the head always has the possibility of killing someone.
whatever you believe, the facts are this guy initiated the confrontation, and killed Chris. his unprovoked act of aggression killed another human. that’s murder.

sounds like this is a small town, and the judge was aware that chris was a bit of trouble maker, and probably felt he deserved what he got.

Jimmy the Saint

If it’s not premeditated and intentional then it is not murder, it’s manslaughter, and that’s exactly the sentence he would have gotten in this country too (which is far to lenient – in my opinion)!

Happy Camper

the only solution for this is a duel.
now that we have sharpened our sabers in the comment section, I will meet you in the park at 1:03 pm and we will let the sword determine who is right.

7dollarsurfboard

Sharpened pork swords and a carpark. Sounds like something Davo would be amped on

Truth

It’s not even worth opening that can. Like old mates some kind of saint in every aspect. Ffs

He didn’t like him. He wanted to give him a flogging & he accidently killed him.

Unfortunately, now his life is fucked

Here’s a tip for any wannabe vigilante, if you really wanna get someone, plan it a bit better than a drunken fist punch after an altercation, both recordered on cctv

The stupid cunt has got what he deserves & then some.

Ps. I’m no pedo sympathiser, but from my specific knowledge there’s pedos & then there’s dickheads like davo obviously become at some point.

Kennypowersmullet

This…

Dennis Commentary

I wasn’t aware Chris was judged ‘ more than a pest ‘ by society at the time

Cuntry Singer

Two dummies and one tragedy.

Fukkada Bong

Idiots them both. The sentence, however, is way too light. Do you want to stop others for punching people at the pub? Give him 15 to 20.

NEGATRON

I don’t think a drunken meathead will refer to the Coleman v Davidson court decision before he smashes someone at the pub.

Fukkada Bong

Well, at least there’ll be fewer meatheads around if they’re taken out of circulation.

Derek Hynd's Missing Fins

Pedos,like Nazis, get punched.

Sean Connery

Brother. He is gone and not coming back. On the bright side you will always have that Bells heat against Kelly where he rocked up leash less and on a binder and took out the goat.

Shredy Kruger

Fuck dat guy!!!


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