A grievously injured man indicated with four fingers the number of people involved in the alleged attack on him, the Supreme Court in Launceston heard.
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Constable Stephen Gillingham was giving evidence in the trial of Corey Mitchell Gesler, 28, of Youngtown.
Mr Gesler has pleaded not guilty to the aggravated armed robbery of Alexander Robert Friend on January 9-10, 2018, and to doing an unlawful act with the intention of causing grievous bodily harm by punching him to the face, head and body, elbowing him to the head and striking him with a wooden baton [a chair leg] and kicking him to the face, head and body.
The Crown asserts Mr Friend was invited to a Waverley unit where four men had hatched a plan to rob him of cash and drugs.
The Crown said Mr Friend was bashed and removed from the unit but managed to climb out of a utility and fell onto the road near the corner of Naroo Street and Tasman Highway.
Constable Gilingham said when he arrived at the site the man's face and was very swollen and that there weas free flowing blood from his moth.
"Was he breathing,?" crown prosecutor Claire Darvell asked.
"His breathing was laboured and a little bit rattly," he said.
She asked if she spoke to him.
"The male couldn't speak and when I asked his name he pointed to his mouth and he was having trouble breathing," he said.
He said the man nodded when he asked if somebody had done it to him.
"I said 'how many' and he held up four fingers on his left hand," Constable Gillingham said.
Constable Gillingham said he noticed that the man had black electrical tape around his neck.
He said he accompanied the man in an ambulance to the emergency department of the Launceston General Hospital where he took a number of photos on his mobile phone.
Justice Robert Pearce spoke to the jury before the photos were distributed.
"You are about to be shown some photos, one in particular is confronting, but not unduly so in my opinion," he said.
"I will remind you at the end of the trial that you must do your best to consider the evidence in the trial without any emotional reaction.
"Be careful to put that out of your mind.
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"The photographs are potentially relevant to the issues in the trial."
The jury heard on Monday that Mr Friend was unconscious for five weeks and spent 10 weeks in hospital.
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