Māngere car-fall death: Witness at Mesi Teo manslaughter trial says defendant confessed to him

Kimleang Youn. Photo / Supplied

A close friend of manslaughter defendant Mesi Teo - who is accused of acting so menacingly towards a passenger in his van that the man decided to jump out of the swiftly moving vehicle - told jurors today that the defendant confessed to him.

Siale Lauaki looked straight ahead while in the witness box in the High Court at Auckland, refusing to glance at Teo even as the defendant, who is representing himself, cross-examined him.

“You are the only person I’m telling about this - no one else. Don’t you ever tell anyone else,” Lauaki, testifying through a Samoan interpreter, recalled Teo telling him after the April 2021 incident that resulted in the death of Kimleang Youn.

“Don’t worry,” he recalled responding to his friend.

Teo has been charged with what is referred to as “fright response manslaughter”, which occurs when someone causes a person by threat or fear of violence to do an act that causes death.

Prosecutors said at the outset of the trial that Teo had met Youn, a 28-year-old from Cambodia known by the nickname “Hang”, just prior to the incident, when they both showed up at the home of mutual friend Tony Lagaloga. One of the men was looking for methamphetamine and the other had methamphetamine but was looking for a pipe to smoke it with, so they went off together, seemingly with the intention of getting high, Lagaloga testified yesterday.

Later that night, a witness who was driving her own car down Robertson Rd in Māngere saw Youn fall from a van that she estimated to be moving at more than 45km/h. He died several weeks later.

Testifying today, Lauaki said he was a passenger in Teo’s van sometime after the incident when Teo decided to recount what happened.

Teo and Youn were supposed to be driving to a shop when Teo decided to drive past it, Lauaki recounted the defendant telling him.

“And then the Chinese man asked him, ‘Where are we going?’ At that same time he unlatched his seatbelt,” Lauaki said.

“And then my brother said to the Asian man, ‘I know you have drugs inside your pockets.’ The Chinese man said to him, ‘No, it’s finished.’ And then my brother said to the Chinese man, ‘What about I check your pockets?’

“At that point my brother tried to touch the thigh of the Chinese man. At that same time the Chinese man opened the door and then he jumped outside the vehicle.”

According to Lauaki, Teo told him he then continued driving.

“He wasn’t so sure what to do,” the witness said. “He wanted to stop the vehicle but at the same time he saw there was a car following his vehicle.”

Lauaki recalled asking Teo how he felt about the incident.

“My brother said to me, ‘I don’t know why he jumped outside. Probably he was scared’,” the witness said. “And that was the end of the conversation.”

Lauaki acknowledged he wasn’t very cooperative the first time he talked with police, but he said it was because he didn’t yet know the man had died and didn’t think it was that serious of an incident he was being asked about.

The second time police approached him, he said, they informed him of the death and said they really needed his help.

“This made it serious for me,” he said of his decision to say more in his second interview. “I feel sorry for the people.”

The trial, which started last week before Justice Michael Robinson, is scheduled to continue through next week.