Photograph of Warriena Wright and Gable Tostee taken inside his apartment the night she died. Photo / Supplied
Photograph of Warriena Wright and Gable Tostee taken inside his apartment the night she died. Photo / Supplied
Gable Tostee was a gentleman towards an erratic and odd Warriena Wright in the hour before she fell from his 14th floor Surfers Paradise balcony, his lawyer has claimed.
Prosecutor Glen Cash said in his closing submissions today that Tostee had caused her death "as much as if he had pushed her from the balcony himself".
But defence barrister Saul Holt urged the jury to examine the evidence of the first date gone horribly wrong in context, remembering those involved could not have conceived in their worst nightmare how it would turn out.
Tostee, who chose not to take the stand in his own defence, is accused of intimidating Wright so greatly by choking her and locking her out on his balcony that she felt the only way to escape was to climb to an apartment below.
The prosection say Warreina Wright's fear of Gable Tostee led to her trying to escape the balcony.
The Brisbane Supreme Court has heard the pair had sex and drank at Tostee's apartment in the early hours of August 8, 2014 after meeting on the dating app Tinder.
An audio recording Tostee made on his mobile phone captured sounds of the physical altercation between the pair and Wright's eventual death.
Cash said the "tall and muscular" Tostee dominated the "slight and petite" Wright as he held her down on the ground with his body weight after pelted him with small ornamental rocks.
"You're lucky I haven't chucked you off my balcony, you goddamn psycho bitch," Tostee told Wright.
"If you try to pull anything, I'll knock you the f*** out."
Cash said the anger in Tostee's voice was palpable as Wright apologised and pleaded to go home.
Wright and Tostee in the apartment the night she died. Photo / Supplied
He argued Tostee could be heard choking Wright for up to 45 seconds on the recording, something the defence disputes, before he locked her out on the balcony, cutting off her only means of escape.
"Just let me go home, just let me go home," Wright said.
"I would but you've been a bad girl," Tostee replied.
Cash said Wright was experiencing such terror, bordering on hysteria, that it was foreseeable she would have climbed over the balcony railing to escape.
But Holt argued Wright said and did things in the lead-up to the her clash with Tostee that were irrational beyond overly drunkenness.
Holt said Tostee reacted patiently to Wright's oddness - "gentlemanly" even.
"'Gable Tostee the Tinder killer versus the innocent victim lured to his apartment' - the way things sell newspapers is not the way they exist in real life," Holt said.
"Gable Tostee is a real person, he is as you know a son, he is a brother, he is a friend.
"He's not the cartoonish villain portrayed in the media."
Holt said Tostee was acting in "self defence" to remove the disorderly Wright from his apartment and shutting and locking the balcony door was an act to de-escalate the situation that created safety for both of them.
Tostee has pleaded not guilty to murder but the jury can find him guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
