A Sydney cage fighter has been found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter for killing his best friend during a backyard sparring session and leaving his body by a footpath.

Bradley Dusan Fletcher was celebrating moving into a rental property with Bradley Evennett in Melonba, near Mount Druitt, in March 2024.

As the pair drank alcohol and snorted cocaine through the afternoon, they began to spar with boxing gloves in the backyard, the NSW Supreme Court trial heard.

Fletcher’s lawyers conceded that tensions rose after Mr Evennett was winded by a body shot and Fletcher was then unexpectedly hit in the head.

But the 40-year-old pleaded not guilty to murder, denying he intended to inflict serious injury when he then retaliated by “instinctively” hitting Mr Evennett hard in return.

Fletcher admitted to the lesser charge of manslaughter at the start of the trial, but the prosecution did not accept that plea.

The Crown alleged Fletcher became angry and deployed his martial arts skills, repeatedly striking the deceased in the head and torso, before putting his body in the boot of a car, driving to a nearby street, and leaving him by a footpath.

Jurors were played police body-worn camera footage from hours later.

“When he was out for half an hour, not breathing, I tried to resuscitate him,” Fletcher told police.

“It didn’t work, and I was like f***. I got scared, like what do I do?”

Cage fighter ‘saw red’ during sparring

It took jurors about two days to find Fletcher not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter.

In the body-worn video, Fletcher told police the death was an accident.

When he was asked how hard he hit his friend and what he thought would happen, he replied: “Honestly, I don’t think.”

Crown Prosecutor Kate Ratcliffe said Fletcher “saw red” during the sparring.

“This was, in the Crown’s submission, a brutal assault upon Mr Evennett,” she told jurors in a closing address last week.

“It’s not a case of sparring which got a bit out of hand, as the accused emphasised in the body-worn video.”

The court heard Fletcher was usually careful when he sparred with his friend, who had a brittle bone condition called Osteo Imperfecta Type 1.

Defence counsel James Trevallion SC said the jury’s inquiry was an inquiry into Fletcher’s intention and state of mind at the time.

He told the panel that when his client spoke to police — some three hours and 40 minutes after the death and still under the influence of drugs — he took responsibility for his actions.

“He tells the police he deserves the maximum sentence for what he did,” he said.

“He’s taking responsibility for his actions from the outset.”

Disposing of his friend’s body

Mr Trevallion said the most important evidence in the trial was that of the accused, who stepped into the witness box in his own defence.

Fletcher told the jury about calling his then-girlfriend, who returned to the property, and eating “half a handful of Xanax” while in disbelief at the situation.

The court heard that after his then-girlfriend left the property again, he loaded Mr Evennett’s body into the boot of a car to transport him.

But Fletcher said he had no memory of trying to dispose of his friend’s body and also testified that he “left a lot of stuff out” of his initial version of events.

Mr Trevallion told the jury that “humans are not machines” and do not have perfect recall, particularly during an event that involved trauma.

In the witness box, Fletcher recalled how Mr Evennett went for a tackle, and they fell to the ground, before he was “heckling” Mr Evennett and tapping him to the face and telling him to get up.

“I didn’t expect to get hit that hard, and I didn’t expect to get hit, to be honest,” he testified.

Fletcher, who remains in custody, will be sentenced at a later date.