A person has died following an incident on the South Western Motorway about 3.20am. Photo / Hayden Woodward
Tears were shed in the courtroom gallery today as prosecutors played traffic cam footage of what would have been the last seconds of 19-year-old Katelyn Rua-Tuhou’s life - her car door opening, they said, as she tried to flee her captor.
The footage, taken from Auckland’s State Highway 20 about 3.15am on Boxing Day 2022, is likely to become a centrepiece in the weeks-long trial of Rua-Tuhou’s on-again off-again boyfriend, Jovan Pora. His jury trial began today in the High Court at Auckland.
Pora, 21, is charged with kidnapping and “fright response” manslaughter - a death that occurs when a victim acts in a risky manner out of fear of violence. He has pleaded not guilty to both charges.
During an opening address, Crown prosecutor Henry Benson-Pope said Rua-Tuhou had voluntarily gotten into the defendant’s car that morning after he arrived at her father’s Manurewa home. But it was clear she did not want to leave with him as he drove off.
“Despite the effort of her family to get her out of the vehicle, he wouldn’t let her go,” Benson-Pope said, explaining that one witness told police she saw the defendant with a knife.
Rua-Tuhou was screaming as the defendant drove off, and CCTV footage would show her a short time later trying twice to open the passenger door, the Crown alleges.
“He would not stop the vehicle,” Benson-Pope said. “He would not let her out.”
About seven seconds after the door was seen opening a second time, Pora lost control of his car about 200 metres away, Benson-Pope told the court. He crashed into a motorway barrier, and with her door still open, Rua-Tuhou flew out and suffered immediately fatal head injuries, he said.
Jovan Pora appears in Manukau District Court in 2022 after being charged with manslaughter. Photo / Dean Purcell
“What have I done?” witnesses would later recall the defendant saying at the scene. “Take me to the cells already.”
The two had dated on and off for about two years, but recent months had been marred by jealousy and violence, Benson-Pope said, referring to text messages that will be presented to jurors later in the trial.
“Everything just hurts,” Rua-Tuhou said in a July 2022 text to a friend after saying Pora had come over and beaten her all night. “I swear, I was scared as f*** last night. ... I really thought he was going to kill me.”
She had also made an outcry about the abusive relationship to her physician that month, prosecutors said.
There was also plenty of loving messages between the two, but it was against that background of jealousy and violence that things turned sour on Boxing Day morning as Rua-Tuhou tried to escape, Benson-Pope said.
When initially interviewed by police, Pora claimed he and Rua-Tuhou had switched places and that she was driving the vehicle when it crashed. He later admitted that wasn’t the case, prosecutors said.
The scene of the fatal crash on State Highway 20 that resulted in a manslaughter charge for Jovan Pora. Photo / Hayden Woodward
In addition to kidnapping and manslaughter, Pora also faces a charge of refusing to submit a blood sample. He has pleaded guilty to having driven when restricted from doing so.
Defence lawyer Vivienne Feyen noted in a brief opening statement that her client only turned up at his girlfriend’s family home that morning after a series of messages in which he was told by family to pick her up. He arrived to find her intoxicated on cannabis and alcohol - so much so that she would have been four times over the limit for driving.
Feyen predicted the Crown would present evidence that was “by no means a compelling or convincing case of kidnapping”.
“While the couple did argue inside the car that morning, Katelyn got into the car ... and remained inside the car by choice,” Feyen said. “She was going home with Jovan Pora.”
There is “a world of difference”, she said, between a terrible car accident and culpable homicide.
The trial is set to continue tomorrow before Justice Mathew Downs.
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.
