Vikhil Krishna murder trial: Defendant described ‘chokehold’ manoeuvre on day of Trinity Oliver’s death

On the same day that 16-year-old Trinity Oliver would later be found dead on the side of the road near a South Auckland train station, Vikhil Krishna sat in his car with one of his oldest friends and is alleged to have described an unusual series of events involving suffocation and an anonymous tip to police.

“He looked like he had something to get off his chest,” Prashant Nand, known to friends by the nickname “Flame”, recalled today at Krishna’s murder trial in the High Court at Auckland.

“He told me about two girls attacking him and trying to take his car.”

One of the attackers, he recalled being told, was Krishna’s 16-year-old ex-girlfriend.

“He went on about, just down the road from my house, they got into an argument and she stabbed his hand with scissors,” Nand testified. “He told me he put her in a chokehold and dropped her in front of her house.

“I asked if she was alright and he said, ‘Yeah, I called the police anonymously.’”

Although left with the impression the girl had suffocated, Nand said he didn’t ask more questions.

“I didn’t know what was going on,” he said. “I was just confused myself.”

Sixteen-year-old Trinity Oliver was found dead near a Manurewa train station in September 2021. Photo / Supplied

Krishna would be charged with murder days after the alleged conversation.

Authorities found Oliver’s unclothed and battered body near the Homai train station in Manurewa on the afternoon of September 11, 2021, roughly 13 hours after prosecutors allege the now-24-year-old defendant intentionally strangled her.

At the outset of his trial last week, defence lawyer Ron Mansfield, KC, acknowledged to jurors that his client caused Oliver’s death and that they had gotten into an argument before she died. He also acknowledged that the defendant had lied to police and his friends about what happened. But Krishna - his mind addled by a days-long methamphetamine bender - had no intention to kill the teen, meaning he might be guilty of manslaughter but not murder, Mansfield suggested.

Prosecutors Natalie Walker and Yasmin Olsen have contended the teen was intentionally strangled with a phone charging cable. While authorities don’t know for sure what motivated the brutal attack on the teen, jealousy seems to be one strong contender, Olsen said during her opening address. She pointed out that strangulation takes minutes, not seconds.

Nand described his friend as an occasional user of methamphetamine who would not use for months at a time then go on a bender for a week or two. He declined to answer when asked if they used the drug together.

“If it gets to be over a month [that Krishna was using meth] he would get out of control,” Nand said. “... He overthinks, he’s delusional. He comes up with a scenario in his head ... and he won’t change his mind.”

After the chokehold discussion, Nand recalled they drove to a Mission Bay motel where friends of theirs were living.

At the motel, friend Kimiko De Wet described more strange behaviour from the defendant.

She said the group watched from inside the motel as police arrived outside and examined Krishna’s car for about an hour, finally having it towed.

Vikhil Krishna appears in the Auckland High Court, accused of having murdered 16-year-old Trinity Oliver in September 2021. Photo / Jason Oxenham

“We were asking him why his car was getting impounded and why he wasn’t going outside to check with them why they were doing this,” she recalled. “He was making up silly excuses, like, ‘Maybe the light was on in the car,’ or, ‘Maybe someone was trying to steal it.’

“He wasn’t making much sense and he was very scattered and very twitchy. He wasn’t acting normal. It was as if he was struggling to put a sentence together.”

She declined to answer when the defence asked if she had been supplying the defendant with methamphetamine in the days leading up to Oliver’s death. She also declined to answer when Mansfield read aloud a Facebook Messenger message, purported to be from her roughly two weeks before the incident, in which she allegedly exclaimed: “It’s snowing. I got that boosty rock ... Going like hotcakes so don’t miss out.”

“You knew he was an addict, didn’t you?” Mansfield asked.

“I prefer not to answer the questions,” she responded.

The trial, before Justice Peter Andrew, is set to continue on Monday.