A grown man who fought with teenagers at a Canberra skatepark has admitted to his role in a brawl that ended with the stabbing death of an 18-year-old.
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Part-time warehouse worker Jaxson Dillon Kirkwood, 26, pleaded guilty in the ACT Magistrates Court on Monday to charges of common assault, affray and property damage.
The victim of the first two counts was the 18-year-old man who was stabbed to death, allegedly by a 16-year-old boy, while the property damage charge related to a car the deceased had driven to the melee.
Kirkwood, of Duffy, is one of nine people charged in connection with the September 2020 incident at the Weston skatepark.
He is the second to plead guilty, following 19-year-old Montgomery Cole White's admissions in the same court last month.
Kirkwood's lawyer, Paul Edmonds, said on Monday morning that the facts of the 26-year-old's offending had yet to be agreed.
But following the man's arrest, police said in court documents that he and White were intoxicated by the time they travelled with another man and a boy to the skatepark.
It was alleged that one of that group had received a FaceTime call from a boy who had agreed to a fight at the Weston skatepark as a result of "an ongoing Snapchat argument".
The boy was said to have asked for back-up at the fight "in case things went south", prompting Kirkwood and the three others to head there in a Mitsubishi Triton.
Kirkwood, according to police, punched the 18-year-old, who was later killed, about five times and hit the bonnet of a Toyota 86 with a pickaxe five times, "causing five punctures through the metal".
A record of his interview with investigators, conducted after he voluntarily went to Woden Police Station the next day, says he only learned some hours later that the 18-year-old had died.
Kirkwood was arrested and charged in December.
The court heard on Monday that police were still investigating the fight more than six months after it occurred, and that there was a dispute over where the 26-year-old should be sentenced.
Mr Edmonds indicated he would argue the matter should remain in the Magistrates Court, while prosecutor Rebecca Christensen said she believed it should be committed to the ACT Supreme Court.
Magistrate Glenn Theakston adjourned the case until July 12 for arguments about the sentencing jurisdiction to be made.
Kirkwood left court with an unruly group, many of whom laughed and jeered as they repeatedly swore at two journalists.
One of them saw fit to offer career advice, calling out: "Get a better job, dickheads."
The others charged over the brawl remain before the courts, with the 16-year-old boy who is accused of murder set to appear again in the ACT Children's Court in May. He has pleaded not guilty.
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