Coffee dispute fight ends in death while customers pay for drinks and food
As Lisa Murphy lay on the floor being assaulted inside a 7-Eleven store in Melbourne, she screamed out for help, telling those holding her down, “I can’t breathe, help me”.
The 52-year-old had just hurled racist abuse at a Jewish woman while at the Caulfield store’s coffee machine. In response, the other woman threw her coffee over Murphy.
As the pair lay wrestling on the floor, other customers walked right past, stopping and standing about a metre away at the counter to pay for coffees, food and newspapers.
A tradie stood clutching an ice coffee drink as he filmed the unfolding scrum on his mobile phone.
“It was pretty extraordinary that people were just going about their business,” Coroner Paresa Spanos said.
Footage of the violent scuffle was played to the Coroner’s Court of Victoria on Monday after Murphy died in hospital days after going into cardiac arrest on the floor of the convenience store, on February 8, 2022.
No definitive cause of death could be found.
Sarah Franklin, the woman who threw coffee on Murphy, and later pleaded guilty to common assault over the incident, told the coroner she attended the store that day with her friend and housemate, Andrea Madigan.
Franklin said she was reading a newspaper while Madigan was making a coffee, when a man approached the second coffee machine at the back of the store, on the corner of Hawthorn Road and Pyne Street.
She said Murphy appeared and pushed the man out of the way, telling him, “I’m here first”.
As Franklin and her friend walked away, Murphy said to them, “I saw you rolling your eyes at me” before hurling racist abuse and a bag of sugar.
“I felt angry ... because I’m Jewish,” Franklin told the coroner.
Video footage of the incident shows Franklin begins to walk away before turning back and throwing her coffee over Murphy.
“I shouldn’t have, but I wanted her to stop her racist ranting and ravings, so I took the lid off my coffee … and I threw it at her,” Franklin said.
Murphy is then seen in the footage running through the aisles towards Franklin, the pair hitting and pushing each other before falling to the floor near the front counter.
Franklin told the inquest she wrapped her legs around Murphy and put her in a type of headlock, with the woman heard yelling, “help, help, help, I can’t breathe, help me”.
As other customers walk around them, Murphy stops lashing out and is left on her stomach as Franklin and Madigan walk away.
By the time police arrive minutes later, Murphy has stopped breathing.
“I tried to punch her to stop biting me. I was fearing for my life and I just thought it was going to end,” Franklin said.
“I put my leg around her because she was moving. [When she yelled she couldn’t breathe] I was thinking it was some sort of ploy to get off her. I couldn’t see how that would affect anyone’s breathing.”
Franklin said when she left she called a lawyer and later gave a police statement. She later pleaded guilty to assault and was given a good behaviour bond.
A charge of recklessly causing serious injury against Madigan was withdrawn. She did not give evidence at the inquest on the grounds of her poor mental health and fears she may incriminate herself.
Counsel assisting the coroner, Leading Senior Constable Clinton Smith, said Murphy had grown up in Victoria’s north, graduating from high school before moving to Melbourne to attend Melbourne University.
A year into her university studies, she deferred and later worked as a personal care assistant, a nurse and a tram conductor, before the death of her parents sparked a decline in her mental health in 2006.
She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and anxiety and was medicated, but in 2012, she began living at the Gatwick Private Hotel in St Kilda, a notorious rooming house that closed in 2018. Murphy’s partner said: “Everything went downhill from there.”
The coroner will hand down her findings at a later date.
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