Fateful brawl ... the scene after the killing at Sydney Airport's Domestic Terminal 3.
HE MIGHT have been a wannabe member of the Comanchero bikie club but one person involved in that fateful brawl was a devout churchgoer and made sure his children went to Sunday school.
Indeed, he had just left church on the morning of Sunday, March 22, 2009, when he got a phone call from a fellow Comanchero telling him he had to go to Sydney airport to ''pick up the boys''.
The man, who is known in court proceedings as ''AL'', told the Supreme Court last week he had to do a quick change.
''I still got my church clothes on,'' AL said. ''I was wearing a blue Hawaiian shirt and I was wearing a red sarong. I took my sarong off and put my shorts on.''And off he went to the airport, he told the court, where he ended up taking part in a brawl with a rival club, the Hells Angels, that left Anthony Zervas, an Angels associate, dead.
Six members of the Comanchero are on trial for his murder inside Terminal 3. One Hells Angel is facing charges of riot and affray.
Apart from giving evidence about what happened that day, AL also gave the jury a glimpse of life inside the club.
He told Crown prosecutor Natalie Adams he met a member of the Comancheros at a gym in Liverpool and later went to the clubhouse at Milperra. After he became a ''nominee'' member, he had to attend every Friday at 7pm and pay $20 for the privilege.
His job, he explained, was to stand guard on the gate and ''pick up the rubbish''.
On the drive to the airport that Sunday to meet the club's president, Mick Hawi, another Comanchero, ''Turtle'', said ''something might happen''.
The court heard that a chance meeting between the Comanchero and the Hells Angel president, Derek Wainohu, on a flight from Melbourne, led to the fatal brawl inside the terminal.
It also heard from a witness that a CCTV camera that could have captured crucial moments of the incident had not been been working for two years.
Last week AL told the court the fight started when ''the president of the Hells Angels walked up and sort of shouldered Mick''.
''After they connected, the shoulders, all the boys were moving. And then Mick swung a hook and got him on the left-hand side … We all move in, I move in - Mick was our president, you know - and I got hit and that's when I throw a punch.''
AL said he hit Wainohu, knocking him to the ground. And someone then yelled: ''Not here, let's go outside.''
A short time later, said AL, he saw ''the boys from the Hells Angels walking in''. One of the Angels group wearing a hoodie had yelled: ''Let's go, let's go.''
This man, said AL, had ''something sharp in his hand, looked like scissors to me'' and struck Hawi on the arm.
He had then seen a Comanchero whom he knew as ''Touza'' striking a man on the ground with ''a silver thing'', which he thought was a rubbish bin.
''He hit him twice. After I saw the first hit and the second hit, that's when I started walking out.''
AL told the court Hawi had been cut on the arm ''and his eyes were all red, you could see, like, blood''. They then left the airport in a cab.
''When we jumped in the taxi, Touza was in the middle, he just go, 'I think I killed him'.''
He said that earlier, on the way to the airport, he had not been expecting a fight but had gone because ''I have to go, you know, to pick up the boys. I'm the nominee so I'm going there to carry some suitcase for the boys''.
If he had refused, he feared he would be punished.
''I might get bashed because I know one guy who didn't go to do a job and he was actually bashed next to me. That happened in the clubhouse.''
The trial continues.
