From the Daily Tele:

Deadly, racist teens
December 28, 2007

A SYDNEY man has died, two days after he was bashed by a gang on Boxing Day.

To his closeknit family, James Tautari was a man who loved to sing karaoke and share a joke and who wouldn’t hurt anyone.

But to a group of 10 teenagers who set upon Mr Tautari on Boxing Day, bashing him with golf clubs and poles, he was a “f…ing black'’ man whose life meant little.

Witnesses who went to the 50-year-old’s aid about 4pm on Wednesday described how the man, bleeding profusely and slipping in and out of consciousness, said he did not know his attackers but they had made a racial slur to him moments before the attack.

He had been walking along Bennett Rd, St Clair after going to McDonald’s at St Marys when he was approached by males described in their mid-to-late teens.

The woman outside whose house the attack occurred, who gave her name as Rita, said she first knew something was amiss when she heard Mr Tautari’s body slam against an awning over her front window.

She said she scared the youths off by yelling at them and then went to help the victim.

“One side of his face was covered in blood. That’s when I thought `this guy needs help’,'’ she said.

She said he had two large wounds on his head with one exposing his skull.

She asked him whether he knew the attackers but he said he did not.

“He said that they called him a f…ing black c…. He turned around and they just started clobbering him,'’ she said.

She said three of the teens had run down a grassy slope to a cul-de-sac at the side of her house and got into a red car before leaving.

A neighbour on the other side of the cul-de-sac, Kate, said she saw 10 Caucasian males aged between 16 and 18 run from behind the bushes of Rita’s house.

One of them had a metal pole and another one had what looked to be a golf club, she said.
Rita said that she found the head of a golf club which had broken off during the attack in her yard and the handle metres away.

Mr Tautari, from Oxley Park, was taken by ambulance to Nepean Hospital in a critical condition and underwent surgery.

He died on Thursday.