At Alva Beach in north Queensland, a late‑night gathering over the 2018 NRL grand final weekend turned into a deadly confrontation that left two men, Thomas “Tom” Davy and Corey Christensen, fatally stabbed outside a home and a teenager, Dean Webber, at the centre of a highly contested self‑defence case.

What happened that night

  • A small group, including Tom Davy, his girlfriend Candice Locke, and locals including Corey Christensen, gathered for drinks near the beach in the tiny town of Alva Beach, south of Townsville.
  • At some point, Candice was injured (including a serious shoulder injury) and later told authorities she believed she had been thrown or fallen from a buggy and feared the men she’d been with.
  • Injured and distressed, Candice went to the nearby house of 19‑year‑old air force cadet Dean Webber, begging for help and saying men were after her; Dean let her in and called emergency services, reporting that he had an injured woman who felt in danger.

The deadly confrontation

  • After Candice was inside, Tom Davy and Corey Christensen went to Webber’s house, apparently trying to find Candice; what happened next is the core dispute.
  • Dean later said the men forced their way in, damaging the door, and that in the dark he was grabbed and flipped, so he armed himself with a kitchen knife and lashed out while terrified.
  • Both Tom Davy and Corey Christensen were stabbed; one suffered a fatal wound to the chest, and the other died from blood loss from multiple stab wounds despite paramedic efforts.

Police, ambulance response and inquest

  • Dean phoned emergency services multiple times, saying there was an injured woman and he needed police; officers treated the situation as another drunken grand‑final‑night call and were slow to respond.
  • Police and paramedics did not reach the scene until roughly an hour after the first call, by which time both men were critically injured; this delay became a major focus of later criticism.
  • A coronial inquest examined both the emergency response and the decision not to charge Dean; the coroner ultimately accepted that he had acted in self‑defence and he has never been charged, but the inquest found serious failings in how police and ambulance services handled the incident.

Ongoing controversy and “Death at the Door”

  • The families of Tom Davy and Corey Christensen remain dissatisfied, arguing that key questions about Dean’s actions, Candice’s account, and the exact sequence of events are still unresolved.
  • Media investigations and a 2025 true‑crime podcast series, Alva Beach: Death at the Door , along with televised specials, have revisited the case, highlighting inconsistencies, new material, and the coroner’s confidential referral of Dean to prosecutors (who ultimately declined to lay charges).
  • The case is now widely discussed in Australian true‑crime circles as a troubling example of a chaotic night, conflicting witness stories, and a widely condemned emergency response in which, as several reporters and commentators put it, “the system failed everyone involved.”

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.