Patrick John Cronin (24 September 1996 – 18 April 2016) was a 19-year-old Australian man who died following a brawl at the Windy Mile Hotel in Diamond Creek, Victoria in 2016.

Cronin was killed by a single strike to the back of his head (described as a coward punch) while he attempted to pull his friend out of the fight.

The main offender, Andrew William Lee, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Cronin and received a prison term of eight years with a five-year non-parole period.

The foundation presents its "Be Wise Education Program" to school students across Victoria in an effort to promote responsible decision-making from a young age.

On 16 April 2016 at 9:45 p.m., Patrick Cronin met with friends at the bar of the Windy Mile Hotel in Diamond Creek, Victoria, Australia.

[4][5][6] At around 11 p.m., a fight broke out just outside the hotel after a man named Joseph Hitchcock confronted a group of four patrons who yelled "fuck off, you fatty" to him.

Upon his arrival at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, doctors determined that Cronin "suffered a significant haemorrhage on the right side of his brain" and that the "injury was not survivable".

"[16] She reported that the punch Cronin suffered caused a two-centimetre (0.79 in) hairline fracture in his skull and it was a "lacerated artery that produced the haemorrhage.

[18] On 19 April 2016, police released an image of "a man they would like to speak to,"[19] the following day, Lee turned himself in, was arrested, and charged with Cronin's murder.

[25] In August 2018, it was revealed that Lee had been speaking to VCE legal studies students as part of a Corrections Victoria education program.

[28][29] Joseph Hitchcock, the man involved in the inception of the fight, was charged over his actions in the brawl, which included criminal damage for breaking the phone of a person who was recording the incident and affray.

[29] Simon Jeffrey Buchanan, with no prior convictions, was offered a diversion, ordered to donate $2,000 to the Pat Cronin Foundation and be of good behaviour after he pleaded guilty to unlawfully fighting and affray.

[28][29] Roughly two years after his death, Cronin's family launched a foundation in his honour to educate, raise awareness and conduct research in relation to the coward punch.

[30] The foundation has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in Victorian state government funding directed at the rollout of the Be Wise Education Program across 200 schools.

The program promotes good decision-making and the dangers of social violence to students, with the ultimate goal being to end the coward punch.