Perched uncomfortably in the dock at Wollongong District Court last Thursday afternoon, Mervyn Davidson claimed he was too sick to hear how many years he would spend in jail for the vicious, drug-fueled bashing of a female Aldi worker in early 2017.
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Davidson, doubled over and clutching at his stomach for the five minutes he was in the courtroom, said he feared he might “have an accident” if he was forced to sit through the 60 minutes or so it would take to deliver the sentence, giving Judge Andrew Haesler little option but to adjourn the proceedings to Tuesday and recommend he receive medical attention as soon as possible.
Twenty-four hours later, Davidson allegedly killed a man.
First-time inmate Alfredo Pengue, 54, was found unconscious inside a cell at Sydney’s Silverwater jail on Friday afternoon.
He was rushed to Westmead Hospital by paramedics but could no be revived. Details of the cause of his death have not been released publicly, however Channel 7 has reported he was strangled.
Davidson, 44, from Dapto, was charged with murder on Sunday night.
The Mercury can reveal it’s not the first time Davidson has been accused of attacking a fellow inmate: on Tuesday, Davidson will also be sentenced for deliberately choking his cellmate two days after he was arrested over the Aldi incident, in which he used a baseball bat to knock a female worker unconscious at the supermarket chain’s Albion Park Rail store during a botched armed robbery.
Davidson claims he was still under the influence of the ice he had ingested prior to the supermarket attack when he turned on his young cellmate on the morning of February 2, 2017, wrapping a t-shirt around the 23-year-old’s neck and strangling him until he was unconscious.
Guards on duty were forced to watch from outside the cell as Davidson repeatedly kick the inmate and were only able to storm the cell when reinforcements arrived.
Officers pulled Davidson off the inmate, who was treated by prison nurses before being taken to Westmead Hospital for observation. He was discharged without serious injury later that night.
Meantime, Davidson chose not to appear in Burwood Local Court on Monday afternoon during a brief mention of the murder charge.
He did not apply for bail and it was formally refused by Magistrate Mark Richardson, who adjourned the case to March 28 for police to serve a brief of evidence on Legal Aid lawyers in Sydney.
Davidson will still face Wollongong District Court on Tuesday to be sentenced on his existing charges.
