Sydney: A woman on a Tinder date suffered 80 injuries when she plunged to her death from a high-rise balcony, an Australian court heard on Thursday, after begging the man she had met on the dating app to let her go.
Warriena Wright’s Tinder date Gable Tostee, 30, who is now standing trial for the 26-year-old woman’s murder, went to eat pizza and called a lawyer after her fall, Australian media reported.
New Zealander Wright, who had been on holiday in Surfers Paradise on Australia’s east coast at the time of the incident in August 2014, had gone to the apartment hours after connecting with Tostee on the popular app.
In chilling audio recorded by Tostee before her death and played to the court, he can be heard complaining about Wright beating him up before calling her a “psycho [expletive]”.
“This is [expletive] [expletive]. You are lucky I haven’t chucked you off my balcony you [expletive] psycho little [expletive],” the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported him as saying, citing the recording.
Wright is then heard to yell “no” amid the sound of what appeared to be a door unlocking and then saying “just let me go home” repeatedly.
Prosecutors allege Wright was locked out on the 14th floor balcony by Tostee in the early hours of the morning after he became angry, and she felt so intimidated that her only way of escape was to climb down to a lower floor.
She instead fell to the bottom of the block and suffered injuries including severe head trauma, a pathologist told the Queensland Supreme Court Thursday, the ABC reported.
The court was told Tostee left the apartment after her fall and called his father and a lawyer and ate pizza, Brisbane’s Courier Mail said.
“I swear to God I didn’t push her, I just chucked her out on the balcony because she was beating me up. Oh my God, I hope she’s not dead,” Tostee said in a recording to his father played to the court, the newspaper reported.
Tostee has pleaded not guilty to her murder, with the trial expected to conclude next week.
