A man has been arrested and accused of hitting his pregnant girlfriend who had interrupted his playing of Fortnite. Their altercation was caught on a livestream and fellow gamers called the police after seeing it.
Luke Munday from Sydney, Australia was using Twitch to stream himself playing Fortnite last weekend when the apparent assault took place.
"Can you not? I said I'll be out soon," Munday says to a woman who isn’t visible in the video. He gets up and swings his hand in the direction he was looking.
“No computer, I’m sick of this,” the woman says, a second before the man says, “stop” and then a slap is heard, followed by a woman crying.
The man sits down again and the woman calls him a “woman basher.”
"I hope all of you people know that I'm pregnant and he just bashed me," she says later in the video. A child can be heard crying off-camera. Police later confirmed a three-year-old girl and a 20 month old girl were in the home at the time.
"F**k off. I will be out soon, you dog. You don't pay the f***ing bills," the man said.
While the alleged assaults take place off-camera, it appears that at least three apparent acts of violence take place during the livestream, which was obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald and has been widely shared on social media.
"You're all judging the video, you don't see what happens, you haven't read the police report, you don't actually know what happened off the camera," Munday told 7 News, the SMP reports. "Everyone thinks I kicked the shit out of her which clearly isn't the case."
New South Wales Police arrested Munday at his home after other gamers revealed his identity. He was charged with common assault and served with an apprehended violence order. He was given bail and has to appear in Camden Local Court later this week.
“While the woman was not seriously injured she was distressed and shaken by the incident.” New South Wales Police said in a statement.
Munday has been suspended from his job as an engineer with Telstra, pending an investigation. The incident “goes against what we stand for as an organisation and the work we have done to assist women impacted by domestic violence,” Telstra manager Steve Carey said.
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