KEY POINTS:
SYDNEY - A teenager charged with the bashing murder of a father of four on Boxing Day has refused to appear personally in a Sydney court.
Luke Tatchell, 18, was due to front Penrith Local Court today charged with the murder of 50-year-old New Zealander James Tautari.
Mr Tautari died in hospital after being attacked by four young men as he walked along Bennett Road at St Clair at about 4pm on December 26.
Police said Mr Tautari was struck several times to the head and body before the group fled the scene.
Ambulance officers took Mr Tautari to Nepean Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery, but he died the following afternoon.
Officers arrested Tatchell and a 17-year-old overnight and charged both with murder.
Tatchell's lawyer told Magistrate David Heilpern in court today his client did not wish to come up from the cells.
Tatchell did not apply for bail today and it was formally refused.
He was remanded in custody until Friday, when he will appear via audio-visual link at the same court.
The 17-year-old was earlier refused bail and will appear before Parramatta Children's Court at a date to be fixed.
The mother of slain Mr Tautari told the Weekend Herald her son may have been victim of mistaken identity.
Janie Henare said Mr Tautari's son had been helping Sydney police trawl through video footage taken from the McDonald's restaurant where a fight erupted between a man and a gang of youths on Boxing Day.
"[Mr Tautari's son] told police that he wasn't sure that the man in the video inside McDonald's looked like his dad," Mrs Henare said.
After the incident at McDonald's, Mr Tautari was walking along a west Sydney street when he was attacked by the gang wielding softball bats and golf clubs.
Mrs Henare, 69, last saw Mr Tautari during a visit to Sydney in October when she had a month off work at the Affco freezing works in Moerewa.
"The last thing I said to him was, 'You should come home, you don't look well, son'," she said.
"He wanted to come home, he told his family that he was going to sell his truck and move back, but it never happened."
Mrs Henare said Mr Tautari's wife of 25 years, Dency, also wanted to return to New Zealand but was paid substantially more as a teacher in Sydney than she could earn back home.
The couple and their children had lived for the past five years in Sydney, where Mr Tautari was a demolition worker.
Nicknamed "Jimmy John" by whanau, Mr Tautari was raised by his maternal grandparents in the Ngapipito Valley, about 10km west of Moerewa.
He left the north in the 1970s and moved to Invercargill, where he worked as a butcher.
- NZPA, AAP, NZ HERALD STAFF
