Poor quality methamphetamine, cut with a cooking product, spurred two men to attack a drug dealer with a crowbar inside a Maitland home last year.
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Scott Shane Papworth and Jacob William Crowe each pleaded guilty in Newcastle Local Court on Wednesday to one count of reckless wounding over the assault in the early hours of August 27, 2022.
According to a statement of agreed facts, the dealer sold poor quality methamphetamine cut with baking powder to Crowe the day before the attack.
Crowe accused the dealer in a message of cheating him but got no response.
The dealer was smoking methamphetamine in the Telarah home of a female associate in the early hours of August 27 when Crowe and Papworth arrived in a ute and walked into the house.
Papworth, who was armed with a crowbar, held the bag of drugs in front of the dealer and said: "You sold Crowey s--t... you ripped him off".
He then hit the dealer in the head with the crowbar.
As he was trying to strike a second time, the dealer fought back and the pair traded punches until Papworth came out on top. When he finished the assault he said "you f---ed up", before he and Crowe left the scene.
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Only Papworth hit the dealer with the crowbar, but the agreed facts say Crowe was present the entire time of the assault, which meant the pair formed a joint criminal enterprise.
"The two offenders attended the house as part of a joint criminal enterprise to assault the victim with the crowbar," the statement of agreed facts noted.
The dealer showed his injuries to police later in the morning and Papworth was arrested a few hours later - in possession of 3.38g of methamphetamine, 9.1g of cannabis and $280 cash suspected to be the proceeds of crime.
Crowe handed himself in to police on August 29.
Papworth - who was shot in the stomach in an Aberglasslyn driveway in 2021 after he allegedly intimidated a woman over a drug debt - remains in custody while Crowe is on bail.
The pair will face Newcastle District Court to get a sentence date on November 9.
