A Sydney teenager who lied to police about the bashing of Cork man David Keohane in Coogee last August has been handed a suspended jail sentence.

 Nineteen-year-old Chanel Taia of Matraville told Waverley Court on October 29 that she denied any knowledge of the bashing to police because she was afraid it would affect her long-term relationship with boyfriend, Thomas Isaako.

Isaako, also 19, is accused of bashing 29-year-old Keohane, who remains in a coma in Cork University Hospital. A 39-year-old man has also been charged with hindering police and concealing a serious offence in connection with the attack.

The court heard that detectives investigating the bashing were led to Taia after records showed there were 18 calls made to her from Keohane’s stolen mobile phone between August 9 and 12. 

The teenager works as a fashion merchandiser and has aspirations to join the army.

Taia initially denied knowing Keohane when questioned by police before eventually admitting that she knew of the bashing.

The court heard that Taia has been in a relationship with Isaako since she was 13 years old and he was “adamant” that she conceal what had happened from police.

Magistrate Lee Anne Gilmour said she was considering a jail sentence for Taia, despite her clean criminal record.

“I accept that you were not there on the night,” Ms Gilmour was reported as saying. 

“If you have been in a relationship with this gentleman since the time you were 13, then of course you are going to be attached to him…if he is a violent man, even afraid of him.”

Taia was ordered to serve a nine-month suspended jail sentence and to be of good behaviour for 12 months. 

Isaako remains in custody and is due to face court again on November 27.

New South Wales police are continuing to search for a fourth man wanted in connection with the attack. A description and photo of New Zealand national Kane Desmond Tupuolamoui, 19, was issued two weeks ago but police have yet to locate him.

“We are not speculating on where he could be,’’ a police spokesman said. “Our inquiries are continuing.”

Meanwhile, David Keohane’s  condition has not improved and his family are maintaining a bedside vigil in Cork.

Three Irish and one Swedish backpacker have become the latest victims of an assault on Australian soil after they were attacked outside a late-night restaurant in Queensland.

The incident allegedly occurred outside the Hungry Tum 24-hour eatery on Bourbong Street in Bundaberg in the early hours of September 21. 

According to one of the victims, three teenage aboriginal girls attacked and assaulted the group “over a cigarette”.

 The incident was caught on CCTV where police said they could clearly see the assailants punching and kicking the victims on the ground.

“Three female backpackers were accosted outside a 24-hour eatery at around 2.30am by three 17-year-old aboriginal girls,” a spokesman for Queensland Police told the Irish Echo.

“We’re unsure what caused the incident, but one of the victims did receive a cut lip from the assault. All the injuries sustained were very minor, however. The aboriginal girls in question were arrested and charged and received 14-day custodial sentences.”

The three attackers – named as Nicole Noreen Fisher, 17, Jessica Ambertell, 18, and Estelle Maree Fisher, 17 – were sentenced to 14 days in jail with a 12-month probation after pleading guilty.

“There has been a number of assaults and it has been in the public limelight,” the magistrate hearing the case, Neil Lavaring, was reported in the Bundaberg Newsmail as saying. “There has been considerable injuries, deaths and all sorts of things.” 

The need to deter people from committing group assaults was influential in his decision to send the three teenagers to jail, he said.

Police prosecutor Sgt Barry Stevens had urged Magistrate Lavaring to join police in helping to stamp out street crime by making an example of the case.

One of the victims of the attack told the Irish Echo about the frightening incident and about how she had received several blows to the head while on the ground during the attack.

“It was all just over a cigarette,” the victim, from Galway, who did not wish to be named, told the Echo. “It all happened in a split second. It was fairly frightening and we’re pretty shaken up,” she added.

“I was pushed to the ground and they started kicking me in the head. I went to hospital and had x-rays done just in case because of the blows to the head but everything is OK, thankfully.

 “I was living there in Bundaberg in a backpacker accommodation doing my three months for my second year working holiday visa. 

“I was just finished doing that and was planning moving on anyway, but I decided to leave much quicker than I’d planned after the incident. I’m living down on the Gold Coast now.”

The Echo understands that the other two Irish victims involved included a man from Dublin and a girl from Westmeath, while the fourth member of the group was a backpacker from Sweden.

The security footage showed how the three girls bashed the backpackers after one of the tourists refused to give them cigarettes outside the store.