The alleged unprovoked and sickening assault on rugby player Conrad Starr in this city early Sunday morning as he walked with mates to a taxi rank will prompt plenty of feeling and emotion among all of us.
It will revive memories of those who remember the bizarre, tragic and extraordinarily unlucky events of similar fateful assaults that have come before.
It has all the hallmarks of the infamous David Hookes fatal blow a few years ago which took the life of the Test batsman and cricketing larrikin. One unlucky punch and that was life gone.
A few weeks ago we saw the same sickening thing with the chilling death of young Thomas Kelly in Kings Cross. He too was knocked down to the ground by someone he didn’t know and never saw. And he never got up.
A former Tamworth man, Kelvin Kane, died too of a similar punch onlya few weeks ago.
They demonstrate the ugly, fateful consequences of violence, often from people fuelled with drugs or alcohol.
Luckily, incidents like those are, as mayor Col Murray and his deputy Russell Webb pointed out yesterday, not the norm for Tamworth. But they bear action.
We’ve had isolated things like this happen before. A few years ago, a similar thing happened and a young Tamworth man survived by the skin of his teeth from a similar punch from out of the blue.
He spent months in rehabilitation.
We hear of anti-social behaviour and ugly incidents at night onTamworth streets. Go out late at night and see for yourself. There might not be the massive violence but there is enough malicious behaviour and common assault from those who wish to steal or rob from people or just push them around.
Often, most people haven’t been too badly injured but that is not the point.
Like driving dangerously, you cannot always predict what might happen.
There are deadly results to just one act sometimes as we have seen.
We cannot afford to take those chances. Police have long warned about the dangers on our streets and we need to take that seriously.
Taking that message to the law and order meeting in Tamworth tomorrow night is one way to force authorities to take it all more seriously.