Jimel Burns-Wong-Tung is on trial for murder in the High Court at Auckland, accused of killing 22-year-old Rangiwhero Toia Ngaronoa in November 2021. Photo / Michael Craig
Jimel Burns-Wong-Tung is on trial for murder in the High Court at Auckland, accused of killing 22-year-old Rangiwhero Toia Ngaronoa in November 2021. Photo / Michael Craig
A young mother of three on trial for murder has acknowledged she was angry at Rangiwhero Ngaronoa on the final day of his life - so much so, she said, that the two exchanged blows after he was delivered to her in the back of an SUV.
But something far more sinister must have happened to him in the roughly seven-minute window between when their confrontation bloodlessly ended and when he was dragged into Takanini Medical Centre with multiple stab wounds, Jimel Desma Tiana Burns-Wong-Tung suggested today from the witness box.
“At any stage did you have a knife in your hands,” her lawyer, Ron Mansfield, KC, asked her repeatedly over the past two days as the third week of testimony in her High Court at Auckland trial neared an end.
“No,” she repeatedly answered.
Burns-Wong-Tung, 25, and Ngaronoa, 22, had been close enough acquaintances prior to that November 21, 2021, meeting that just weeks earlier the defendant said she had allowed Ngaronoa to stay at her home while her family spent two weeks recovering from Covid-19 at the Jet Park isolation facility.
But word had got back to her a day earlier that Ngaronoa had accused a relative of hers of acting in a sexually inappropriate manner towards a child. It was a laughably inaccurate accusation, she said - and the child’s own mother agreed. But it caused a wave of anger across several families that resulted in Ngaronoa being detained by his own uncles and brought to the defendant.
“I was shocked, definitely,” Burns-Wong-Tung said of her reaction to the accusation. “I didn’t believe it at first, but it did concern me. It made me a bit mad.”
The defendant insisted she had nothing to do with arranging for Ngaronoa to be detained by his uncles. She said she also did not organise the confrontation in a Weymouth, South Auckland cul-de-sac that was captured on CCTV and played for jurors repeatedly. It was the uncles’ idea because they wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on, she said, explaining that they gave her directions to the cul-de-sac and told her to show up so she could have it out with him.
Her partner, Tago Hemopo - who is on trial beside her charged with conspiracy to injure and being an accessory to murder after the fact - drove her to the site but didn’t have any idea what it was about, she said, describing him as someone who is quiet and not prone to conversation.
Tago Kepa Hemopo appears in the High Court at Auckland, where he is on trial alongside partner Jimel Burns-Wong-Tung concerning the death of Rangiwhero Ngaronoa. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Burns-Wong-Tung acknowledged it was her seen in CCTV footage approaching the SUV that contained Ngaronoa. It was he who started yelling at her first as they began to “debate” the allegations, she said, describing his behaviour as “erratic” and as if high on methamphetamine.
“I wasn’t wound up but I was just mad about the allegations,” she said.
“We were yelling and screaming at each other. I insisted he open the door so we could talk properly but instead, he kicked me in the stomach.”
Under cross-examination, Burns-Wong-Tung answered “no” to a long series of questions from Crown prosecutor Todd Simmonds: “Was he crying at that stage before you opened the door? ... Was he pleading with you at that stage not to hurt him? ... He’s shrieking as you continue to stab him with a knife, isn’t he?”
Simmonds noted earlier testimony from a bystander who described hearing “squealing like a pig”.
Both sides spent considerable time today and throughout the trial focusing on the CCTV footage, which showed Burns-Wong-Tung transferring something between her hands before she arrived at the ute. She said it was her phone, while the prosecution said it showed her pulling a knife from the sleeve of her bright red jumper. The confrontation itself was obstructed, on the side of the ute not facing the camera.
The footage was magnified and projected onto the courtroom wall, but it was pixelated to the point that distinct facial features couldn’t be seen - leaving room for debate about what was in her hands.
“On the inside of your left arm, pointing upwards is unmistakably the blade of a knife, isn’t it?” Simmonds asked, pointing to a magnified white spot. “It is clear as day, I suggest.”
Five hours later she is captured on CCTV leaving a laundromat holding a knife in a similar manner, he suggested, although the footage also showed Burns-Wong-Tung using the knife that time to retrieve change from a broken machine.
But Mansfield rubbished the suggestion it was a knife in the earlier video, pointing out that there were white spots of distortion all throughout the security footage - a natural result of low-quality security cameras with low frame rates. It included white outlines on the other side of her arm, on her back and atop her head. Did she have six or seven knives strapped to her body, he asked facetiously.
Aside from the CCTV footage, the Crown focused most intensely on her insistence that Ngaronoa was not bleeding and had no stab wounds at all during or immediately after their confrontations.
It was a direct contradiction to statements that brothers Robert and Ford Stevens had earlier given police, although they both testified at trial that their brains were too fried by meth to remember much of anything from that day. In his statement, Robert Stevens said he first saw the knife when the defendant got the SUV and that he soon thereafter saw “heaps of blood”.
“Do you accept it’s an unusual thing for him to get wrong?” Simmonds asked.
“He does say unusual things because he’s an unusual person that’s high on methamphetamine all the time,” Burns-Wong-Tung replied.
Simmonds then pointed to CCTV video of all of the vehicles leaving the scene “at pace” immediately after the confrontation occurred. Within about a minute, Ngaronoa’s uncles had called 111 and stayed on the line until they dropped him off at the medical centre roughly six minutes after that. The drive to the hospital, seven minutes in total, is listed on Google Maps as typically taking nine to 16 minutes, Simmonds noted.
“Are you suggesting that ... [the uncles] have stopped the vehicle and they’ve suddenly stabbed their nephew repeatedly ... and then they’ve jumped back in their car and they’ve roared off to the medical centre?” Simmonds asked with a tone of incredulity.
“I’m not suggesting that,” Burns-Wong-Tung said. “I do believe there was a minute before they’re dialling the 111 call.”
Gisborne resident Rangiwhero Toia Ngaronoa, 22, died in November 2021 after he was dropped off at a South Auckland medical facility with critical injuries. Photo / Supplied
Rocky and Thomas Ngapera, the uncles, both pleaded guilty just days before the trial began to conspiracy to injure.
While Burns-Wong-Tung only hinted at the idea the uncles might have been the real killers, her lawyer was more explicit.
“There is a clear opportunity for BT [Thomas] or Rocky, who we haven’t heard from, to engage with this young guy,” Mansfield said during his opening address just prior to his client’s testimony. “And then, you might think, things go too far.”
Earlier in her testimony, Burns-Wong-Tung described Ngaronoa as an acquaintance she had met about six or seven times before.
“We had a pretty good relationship,” she said, describing him as “a positive, bubbly person” - except when he was on methamphetamine - and herself and someone who “basically gets on with everybody”.
She said she found out about his death the following day on social media.
“I felt saddened,” she said. “I was a bit worried, because I knew we had an altercation the day before. I was guessing what other people and the police would think.”
The defence called two other witnesses today who said they met with Burns-Wong-Tung for a meeting about house renovations at 1pm that day, which would have been within minutes of the confrontation - as paramedics in another area of town were trying unsuccessfully to keep Ngaronoa alive.
Both women, one a lawyer and another a social worker and registered teacher, said they knew Burns-Wong-Tung well and didn’t notice her demeanour to be any different than usual. She didn’t appear to have blood on her clothes, they also both said.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
