Ram raid: Napier rape trial hears teen allegedly kidnapped, raped after $20k ATM heist

CCTV footage showed the van as it smashed into the front entrance of the Pettigrew Green arena.

This article details an allegation of rape which may be distressing for some readers.

A teenage girl says she was roped into a ram raid that saw an ATM containing almost $20,000 ripped from a sports stadium, beginning a 48-hour ordeal during which she was allegedly kidnapped and raped.

Now, Earl Strathern Campbell is on trial in the High Court at Napier on charges of rape, sexual violation, kidnapping, strangulation, aggravated burglary and unlawful possession of a firearm.

His father, Ricky Campbell, appears alongside him charged with kidnapping and being an accessory to the burglary after the fact.

Both of their lawyers say the men were not involved.

Crown prosecutor Clayton Walker said the ATM was taken from the Pettigrew Green Arena, an all-weather sports and event centre in Taradale, Napier, in the early hours of November 8, 2020.

“It was a ram raid and the target was the ATM machine in the hallway,” he told the jury.

The ATM was loaded into the van which was then driven out of the building and away. It contained $19,800.

“Not bad for two minutes’ work if you can get away with it,” Walker said.

A CCTV video played at the trial, pieced together from cameras inside and outside the building, showed a van crashing through a door at the centre. It is driven down a hallway, turned around and then driven back the other way.

The ATM is not visible in the cameras, but the court was told that the machine was knocked off its floor mounts, taken away and opened with grinders.

CCTV footage shows the van being driven down a hallway in the Pettigrew Green Arena. Photo / Supplied

The van and the ATM were found by police later but there was no fingerprint or DNA evidence linking them to the people responsible. The money was gone.

However, Walker said that 18 months after the raid, a young woman came forward to tell police that she had been a passenger in the van and that she had been “roped into it” by Earl Campbell when she was 15 years old.

She alleged that the van had been taken to Ricky Campbell’s house, where she was locked in a room while the ATM was opened.

Walker said that was the start of a “48-hour nightmare” for the girl, who had known Earl Campbell previously.

He said that Earl Campbell took her with him to dump the ATM and the van, and then to a motel, where they stayed for two nights.

She was allegedly made to go with Earl Campbell wherever he went.

“She was not free to leave by herself,” Walker said.

On the first night, he raped her and forced her to do sexual acts with him despite her saying no, the Crown alleged.

But Earl Campbell’s counsel, Manaaki Terekia, said his client was never in the van, and was not at Ricky Campbell’s house when the ATM was opened.

He never sexually assaulted the girl in any way and had been made a “scapegoat”.

“These allegations are complete fabrications,” Terekia said.

“Earl was simply not involved. None of this has anything to do with him.”

Ricky Campbell’s lawyer, Scott Jefferson, said the young woman, now 18, was not telling the truth about the older man.

“There is no real truth in what she has to say about him,” Jefferson said.

The young woman has statutory name suppression.

The trial before Justice Helen Cull and a jury of eight men and four women is expected to last two weeks.

Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME's Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke's Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.