KEY POINTS:
Auckland police, facing flak for telling a young couple to go back to the scene where they were allegedly assaulted, are continuing to investigate the early morning fracas.
But they say there is no "clear view" as to exactly what happened.
Chelsea Langridge, 27, and her fiance Grant Williams, 35, are angry an emergency phone operator told them to go looking for the strangers who had just beaten them up last Saturday morning. They say the advice led to them being viciously attacked a second time.
The couple were walking down High Street in the central city some time after 3.30am when they say they were set upon by more than eight women and men.
Without provocation, one of the women started punching Langridge in the face. "And then they had me on the ground and they ripped at my hair and were trying to whack my head against the concrete."
A group of men suddenly descended and one began beating up Williams after the latter pushed him.
"They were all really wired," Langridge said. "They just looked quite crazy, especially the one that punched me, she just looked like she wanted to hurt me really bad."
The pair managed to flee in a taxi.
Once home, they called police and asked if a police car could collect them and drive them back to High St, to identify their attackers.
The operator said there were no police cars available at that time. The transcript of the call records her telling Langridge: "My supervisor said we won't be picking you up ... I'm afraid. What you can do is if you go back down there and if they are still there, then call us immediately and we'll come down and get them."
She also advised them to stay in their vehicle.
Williams and Langridge's flatmate then drove them back into town and parked in High Street, where they saw one man and two women they allege were involved in the attack.
Recalled Williams: "I just walked up to them. I didn't get a chance to say anything; the guy said 'you're the one that beat up my sister', and he just smacked me and they started going hard out then the chick pulled a bourbon bottle out and just smashed me over the head with the bottle."
Langridge said the attacker punched her when she came between him and Williams, now lying on the ground with blood pooling around his head. He removed his shirt and began kicking Williams repeatedly. The flatmate, who was watching helplessly from her car, said the scene was very muddled but she believed seven or eight people joined the attack. She borrowed a mobile from a stranger nearby to call emergency services, which arrived about 10 minutes later.
Superintendent Allan Boreham, manager of the Northern Police Communication Centre, said the discussion about returning to find the offenders "should have been cut short".
However, "if the advice that was given had been followed exactly, which was that they remain in the vehicle and call police immediately, I'm comfortable no harm would have come to Grant or Chelsea".
Boreham said the operator and the supervisor were concerned that the couple would go back anyway, and that was why they gave that advice. But he said they made a judgement call in a tense situation.
He said Langridge and Williams had first been offered the options of either making a formal complaint over the phone, or going to a police station the next day to do so.
He said what was needed was to get a complaint established, then look at other avenues of inquiry such as speaking to bouncers and examining CCTV footage.
"It's actually evidentially risky, when people are telling you that they don't have good descriptions, to go back to an area and say, 'oh, I think it's these people'."
Boreham said Detective Senior Sergeant Hayden Mander of the Auckland Central CIB was heading the investigation into the incident.
"It became obvious reasonably quickly that there was not a clear view as to how that event had unfolded. It was originally reported by other members of the public as a group of people fighting."
Extracts from the emergency phone call transcript:
Operator: Was it just the two of you there?
Williams: Yeah, and some other bystanders that came in to help us out, we are real happy to go back down there to identify anyone, eh.
(Operator suggests Grant Williams either make a complaint on the phone, or go down to a police station in the morning.)
Williams: Is there any point of going down in the morning?
Operator: To make the report?
Williams: Yeah.
Operator: I definitely suggest that you should and give a description of the people, and that sort of thing.
Williams: I was huddled up in a ball just taking kicks so I couldn't give a description.
(Chelsea Langridge then phones back.)
Langridge: Hi, I just got um quite badly assaulted and so did my partner, and, um, and we got a taxi home but we would quite like to be picked up if possible and taken back down to where we were assaulted to identify people, to potentially have them identified and maybe charged.
(Operator asks for details of what happened.)
Williams yelling in background: If you don't do something about
it we are going to get a bunch of people down there and ... f**k them.
Operator: My supervisor said we won't be picking you up ... I'm afraid. What you can do is if you go back down there and if they are still there, then call us immediately and we'll come down and get them.
Langridge: So if we catch a cab and they are still down there and we don't get beaten up?
Operator: Ask the cab driver to stay with you, sit in the car with you.
