A man who pleaded guilty to stabbing and killing another man on a Tolland driveway last year will have to wait another five months to learn his fate.
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Tristan James Lee, 30, was committed on Friday for sentencing in Wagga District Court after pleading guilty to the manslaughter of 37-year-old Junee man Daniel Murdoch.
Lee was originally charged with murder, however, after a committal hearing last month, Crown prosecutors downgraded his charge to manslaughter, and Lee immediately pleaded guilty.
During the committal hearing, the court heard that Murdoch was found bleeding to death in a driveway in the early hours of May 16 last year after an altercation with Lee outside his Tolland home.
The police officer in charge of the case said Lee later told him: “Look, man, I’ll tell you what happened off the record – the bloke came around to buy drugs and stole Katie’s phone. I grabbed my hunting knife and chased him. I thought I only nicked him.”
According to documents tendered to the court, Murdoch and a friend visited Lee's Toy Place home about 2am on the morning of his death to buy drugs.
When Lee asked them to leave, his then partner Katie Lee Burgess noticed her phone and some of her money were missing from the house.
Lee asked Murdoch to empty his pockets, but he refused and ran outside, where a physical altercation between the two men began before Murdoch fled.
As Lee chased Murdoch ran through a dark, grassy laneway connecting Toy Place and French Place, he fell on top of him and stabbed him with an outstretched knife he had been running with.
Ms Burgess later called triple-0, who found Murdoch dead in a French Place driveway.
Lee, who is being held at the Junee Correctional Centre, will return to court on December 7 for a sentencing hearing expected to take a whole day.
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