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In CCTV footage, played to the jury, Fainu and his friends could be seen jumping a fence back onto church grounds.
“I was expecting to go myself… into the dance hall and collect the money,” Fainu said. “I just saw something, like a brawl going on, when I was on my way to the chapel.”
He said he was “10 to 15 meters away” from the brawl of six to eight men.
“I backpedaled… started walking backwards,” Fainu said.
He said he had received training as a rugby league player to walk away from fights and “don’t get yourself involved”. He said he did not know the other group and nobody touched him that night.
“I just saw it for a minute or two, and then I ran away,” Fainu said.
“I was scared for myself… I heard ‘knife, knife’.”
Cunneen asked: “Do you know who stabbed Mr Levi?”
“No,” he replied.
Fainu said his group of friends discussed how the fight started and Faingaa said he had “dropped someone” and still “wanted to go back and get the money”, but would not tell him the reason.
Fainu said nothing was said about a knife, and he did not know anyone was stabbed.
He denied having any weapon or seeing any of his friends with a knife, and said the suggestion that he had a knife in his sling or pants was “incorrect”.
Asked by Crown prosecutor Emma Curran whether he was “the one that plunged a knife into the back” of Levi, Fainu said, “No ma’am.”
He dismissed the suggestion that he had brought a knife because he had one arm “out of action”, and denied having wanted to take Levi “out of the fight”.
“You swung around in front of him and swung the knife upwards towards his face?” the prosecutor asked.
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“That’s incorrect, ma’am,” Fainu replied.
Levi previously gave evidence he and a friend had walked two men to the front gate after a fight broke out on the dance floor. He was later stabbed in the shoulder blade while at his car, suffering a collapsed lung, internal bleeding and a laceration above his eyebrow.
Fainu disagreed with Curran’s suggestion that he had been the “leader of the group” seen on the CCTV, and denied being “up close, involved in the brawl”.
Fainu said a white towel seen on his head in the footage was “like a security blanket” which he puts cold water on when his head “gets really hot”.
Asked by Curran whether the towel was to hide his identity, he said he “had a bit of a headache that night”. Fainu said he was “sad, probably depressed” about his football career as he had not known whether he would play for Manly again after his injury.
He said he was not sure where Faingaa was now as they had not spoken since the altercation due to his bail conditions.
His trial before Judge Nanette Williams continues.
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