Festival founder Spiro Boursinos (Boursine) called triple zero from Elsternwick’s Antique Bar in October 2018, stating he was “about to get f ing killed”.
Held face down by bar owner Sam Falleti, a bartender and another patron, the 45-year-old lost consciousness before dying at the bar. In the wake of his death Victorian coroner Jacqui Hawkins on Tuesday called for bar operators and staff to be trained to recognise and safely manage patrons having mental health or drug-related episodes.
His older brother, Steve Boursinos, hopes this might “save somebody else’s life” even though it is too late for his brother, who “could have still been alive had the bar handled the situation differently, had the police been called to the scene 10 minutes earlier” – so many ‘what ifs’.