A magistrate has agreed to allow 16 NRL cheerleaders to be cross-examined during the committal hearing of a man accused of throwing his girlfriend to her death from his high-rise balcony on the Gold Coast.
Forty-six-year-old cruise ship entertainer Dan Shearin — who has now changed his name to Jayden Moorea — is charged with the murder of 21-year-old Breeana Robinson, who was legally blind.
The former Gold Coast Titans cheerleader died after falling from the balcony of Mr Shearin's 11th-floor Southport apartment in 2013, 38 days after the pair had moved in together.
The case was initially treated as a suicide, but detectives re-examined the case in 2017 and in January this year charged Mr Shearin with murder.
Prosecutors have collected witness statements from Titans cheerleaders who said Ms Robinson was "always friendly, always smiling" and "a go-getter" who "seemed happy" in her last training session with the squad, which took place hours before she died.
Mr Shearin's defence barrister Angus Edwards said prosecutors were using the statements to establish Ms Robinson was not suicidal the night of her death, and asked to cross-examine the cheerleaders to determine how well they knew Ms Robinson.
"Did they have personal conversations with her, did they go in-depth into her life?" Mr Edwards said.
"Or is it the case they'd see her at training and then they don't see her again?
"They say she's happy and bubbly, but a lot of them also say she's quiet and keeps to herself, so I don't know, as a body of evidence, that this amounts to anything."
Magistrate Mark Bowden agreed that Ms Robinson's teammates could be questioned to establish "how well they knew her and how they were able to make these observations".
The committal hearing is scheduled to be held early next year.
