About 9.45pm emergency services responded to reports of a violent assault in the car park of the Ashmont Inn on Tobruk Street.

Witnesses said a fight had broken out in the car park and the 34-year-old was knocked to the ground by a ‘coward punch’.

Paramedics arrived to find people performing CPR on an unconscious Ashmont man and they continued efforts to resuscitate him, but he died at the scene.

Police established a crime scene and it was examined by forensic specialists.

Detectives arrested a 28-year-old man with a head injury at a Marshall Street home over the incident a short time later and took him to Wagga Rural Referral Hospital under police guard.

He was treated before being taken to Wagga Police Station and charged with affray.

Shortly after 11.30pm, a 29-year-old man walked into Wagga Police Station and spoke to officers before he was also arrested over the incident.

The 29-year-old was charged with ‘assault cause death by person 18 years or more, intoxicated’ and affray.

Both men were refused bail and will appear in Wagga Local Court on Monday.

Police from Wagga Local Area Command are continuing to investigate the incident and have appealed for anyone with information about the man’s death to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

NSW introduced mandatory minimum prison terms for causing deaths with a single strike in 2014 after several high-profile deaths including that of Daniel Christie, who was punched at Kings Cross on News Year’s Eve, 2013 and died in hospital 11 days later.

World champion boxer Danny Green launched an anti-coward punch campaign after Christie’s death.

In NSW, offenders who are intoxicated during a one-punch attack must be sentenced to at least eight years in prison. There is no mandatory minimum sentence for those who were not intoxicated at the time of the attack.