KEY POINTS:
A jury must determine whether a Tauranga teenager is guilty of manslaughter for taking part in a street race where a spectator was killed.
Christopher James Copping, 17, was not driving the car that hit 20-year-old Scott Finn, but prosecutors say he is liable for Mr Finn's death because he was driving dangerously and engaged in an illegal race.
The defence plans to argue that Copping was not racing when the other car struck Mr Finn - who was one of the race starters - at Mt Maunganui in May last year.
Name suppression for Copping was lifted when his trial began in the High Court at Rotorua yesterday.
He was jointly charged, with Jeffrey Douglas Luke, with manslaughter. Luke was driving the turbo-charged Mitsubishi Galant VR4 that killed Mr Finn and was sent to jail for 20 months after pleading guilty.
Luke, 20, appeared as the first witness at Copping's trial and told the court the defendant approached him a few minutes after Mr Finn was killed and asked him not to tell police they were racing.
The court also heard that Copping drove his modified Honda Integra away from the scene on Aviation Drive and returned in a friend's car, denying any involvement in the race when questioned by police.
Asked by officers what he had seen, the then 16-year-old allegedly said "a shower of shit flying and that was about it".
Crown prosecutor Greg Hollister-Jones said Copping, a restricted driver, belonged to a boy-racer group called the Game Over Club and had congregated with others at another spot popular for illegal street racing before the fatal race.
But police had arrived and the group had scattered from the first spot and gathered again at Aviation Drive.
Once there, races began again, with cars competing down a 400m straight stretch of road before the end of the cul-de-sac.
Copping and Luke had raced before and used a rolling start, which involved two race starters standing on the road 20m apart.
The first acted as a marker for the cars to begin moving, and the second signalled the proper start of the race.
Mr Finn was the second starter and was hit when the cars were returning to the starting position after reaching the end of the straight.
Luke estimated they reached speeds of up to 140km/h, and a police crash analyst calculated Luke's car was travelling at between 77km/h and 100km/h when it struck Mr Finn.
Mr Hollister-Jones said Copping had encouraged Luke's dangerous driving and by taking part in an illegal street race was just as liable as Luke for Mr Finn's death.
But Copping's lawyer, Paul Mabey, QC, said Copping was not racing after he turned around at the end of the straight and instead just "cruised back" to the start.
Sixteen young people at Aviation Drive when Mr Finn died early on May 19 last year are being called as witnesses.
