A resident walking his dog saw him in the street yelling: ''These blacks are turning this town into the Bronx. I'm going to take my town back. I'm looking to kill the blacks.''
Still fuming about an incident three days earlier when he reported being chased by a group of 20 Sudanese men, some carrying knives, Rintoull found Liep Gony. Rintoull's mate Dylan Sabatino, 21, also armed with a metal pole, joined him. The pair hit Gony, 19, repeatedly with their metal poles, fracturing his skull, and left him to die in the gutter about 10.30pm on September 26, 2007.
They returned home, where Sabatino's girlfriend, Shandelle Laurie, saw them go to the backyard and wash blood off the poles, which had been bent out of shape in the attack. Rintoull, 24, told her: ''I bashed a nigger and I think he's dead.''
Prosecutor Aaron Schwartz detailed the killing yesterday in the Supreme Court, where Rintoull pleaded guilty to murder, and Sabatino pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
While Rintoull and Sabatino were planning to flee with their girlfriends to Adelaide, where they were arrested four days later, Mr Gony's family was making the decision to switch off his life support system after being told he would never recover.
After escaping war-torn Sudan and surviving a fire in an Ethiopian refugee camp, Mr Gony's mother, Martha Alma, thought her family's troubles were over when they were granted asylum in Australia in 1999. She had lost her husband to the war and a son in the fire. She said in a statement that her two surviving sons and daughter were having difficulty coming to terms with the death of Liep - a ''wonderful son and brother''.
Mr Gony's sister Nyachoul Gony said: ''Liep was not just my brother, he was my best friend. I have two hands, my right hand and left. The right-hand was Liep, it is gone now. Everything is so heavy.''
Former immigration minister Kevin Andrews sparked a race row at the time of Mr Gony's death when he said it was linked to a failure of Sudanese people to integrate. The Press Council last year upheld a complaint that The Australian newspaper incorrectly implied his death was at the hands of a Sudanese gang.
George Georgiou, for Rintoull, said it was ''overly simplistic'' to characterise the attack as racially motivated. He said Rintoull was driven by anger about being previously chased by a group of Sudanese youths when he went to give a sandwich to a boy of African descent in a derelict house.
''He chose the unfortunate word [nigger], but we submit what he is really describing is a gang that operates out of the Noble Park [train] station.''
Justice Elizabeth Curtain said Rintoull had not simply misused language. ''You cannot get over what is painted on those walls … it is all part of the one episode and he is geed up in that mood and he goes out looking for them [black people].''
The pre-sentence hearing continues.
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