Denies assault with intent

Gisborne Courthouse

A brain injury survivor told Gisborne District Court a woman got it all wrong when she thought she saw him assaulting a man outside the public library. It was he and associates who were under attack, the accused, Louis Rehutai, told the judge. The other man was intoxicated, standing over them and demanding their phones, he said.

Rehutai denied a charge of assault with intent to injure. He gave evidence in his defence during a judge-alone trial before Judge Warren Cathcart. He was trying to fend off the other man and move him along, he said. He did not punch, kick or stomp on the other man’s head — a witness got that wrong. But he could understand how his movements might be misconstrued, Rehutai said.

Under stress and due to his brain injury, his body tensed up. From a distance, his fists might have looked clenched and he might have looked as if he was kicking. The witness, a woman summonsed from Tauranga to give evidence for the prosecution, said she saw Rehutai from across the street.

She called police after she saw the other man punched to the ground and Rehutai kick his head as if it were a rugby ball. Her daughter, who was with her, still had nightmares about the incident. Rehutai ran off, the witness said.

But in the witness stand, Rehutai said the woman made it sound as if he had beaten the other man up “just for the sake of it”. The other man had been dancing around him, challenging him to a rumble for his phone, he said.

The man stumbled backwards and hit his head on a pole then fell to the ground face first. He grabbed at Rehutai’s legs and was attempting to pull himself up. Rehutai, conscious of his prior head injury, was fearful of losing his balance and ending up on the ground too. He was trying to dislodge his legs and push the other man off him, Rehutai said. He noticed blood on his shoe later.

He had not run off as the woman alleged but had walked. Neither had he gone back and continued to kick the man as he lay motionless on the ground.

Rehutai said he went back because he felt sorry for the other man, told him “that’s what you get for trying to take people’s phones”, and to ask if he was OK. He had not stomped on the man’s head. Had that occurred, the man would have ended up in intensive care, Rehutai said. The witness’s claims were “a load of crap”.

Under cross-examination, prosecutor Sergeant Tess Brownlie put it to Rehutai that had he not been fleeing the scene, he would not have left his bike there. Rehutai said he could not have ridden it because he had a seizure during the dispute, which had further affected his balance. He might have fallen off and been badly injured.

Sergeant Brownlie put it to Rehutai he made his story up. If he had really wanted to protect himself from the intoxicated man that day, he could have just stepped away.

The man allegedly assaulted in the incident was summonsed to give evidence and told the court he had not made a complaint to police. They had contacted him only in recent weeks. He remembered nothing about the incident other than getting up off the ground to walk home and an ambulance stopping to offer him help shortly afterward. He was taken to hospital for a check-up, cleared of any injury and went home.

Cross-examined by counsel Mark Sceats, a constable who attended the scene said he did not know whose blood it was on Rehutai’s shoe. It had not been sent for scientific testing. Judge Cathcart reserved his decision.