A female Danish tourist was knocked unconscious and stomped on in a savage unprovoked attack just hours after arriving in Alice Springs, allegedly by a violent aboriginal criminal who was spared jail in December for attacking police.
Christopher Lee Maxwell, 22, appeared in Alice Springs Local Court on Wednesday charged with aggravated assault, and while he did not apply for bail and was remanded in custody he indicated he would fight the charges, NT News reported.
The 21-year-old woman had only been in the aboriginal crime-plagued outback town for a few hours when she took at walk down South Terrace next to the Todd River at about 4pm and Maxwell allegedly started throwing rocks at her.
NT Police Southern Watch Commander Marc Watson said Maxwell then punched her before stomping on her head and chest as she lay unconscious on the ground.
“It was a shocking unprovoked incident that no one should be subjected to,” he said.
Two members of the public intervened, and the tourist was taken to hospital in a stable condition with non-life threatening injuries.
She has since left Alice Springs, which was last year ranked the 18th most dangerous city in the world.
In December last year Maxwell pleaded guilty to two counts of assaulting police, an offence with a maximum penalty of seven years’ jail, and one count of being armed with an offensive weapon.
The court heard he went on a rampage with a plank of wood in the Alice Springs Coles carpark before punching a female officer in the head.
His lawyer told the court his mother drank alcohol while she was pregnant with him, he was “functionally illiterate”, and is a “highly vulnerable young man”.
Judge Anthony Hopkins sentenced him to just one month in prison, but suspended it immediately and told him: “You’ve got to promise to stay out of trouble for six months.”
Header image: South Terrace, Alice Springs (Google Street View).
