Prosecutors say Himatjit Khalon is responsible for the death of Aiden Sagala, 21. Video / NZ Police
Aiden Sagala, 21, died after an accidental overdose from meth-laced Honey Bear House Beer.
Himatjit “Jimmy” Kahlon is on trial for manslaughter, accused of negligence in the drug scheme.
Kahlon denies knowledge of the illegal operation, claiming he was duped by a co-defendant.
On March 2 last year, 21-year-old Aiden Sagala turned blue, collapsed in his home and later suffered a heart attack while en route to hospital after taking a few sips from a can of Honey Bear House Beer. He would die five days later, with multiple organs having failed and an “off the chart” level of meth in his body.
One day after the accidental overdose, Himatjit “Jimmy” Kahlon was seen on camera hauling multiple packs of the beer cans from his car into the same South Auckland warehouse where he had retrieved them days earlier. The warehouse, authorities would later learn, was the centre of a major drug importation operation.
That CCTV footage was played today at Khalon’s ongoing manslaughter trial in the High Court at Auckland. It was one of the final pieces of evidence presented by the Crown before prosecutors Robin McCoubrey and Pip McNabb announced that they had finished calling evidence for the case.
The defence will now have an opportunity to call witnesses on Wednesday.
Prosecutors have said from the outset that Sagala, who worked with the defendant at Fonterra, had no idea the dozens of cans of beer that had been gifted to him were in any way connected to the illegal meth trade. But Kahlon, they alleged, would have been aware that some cans contained liquid meth as part of the scheme. He didn’t take “reasonable care or precaution” to make sure there were no drugs in the beverages given to Sagala, they have suggested. '
Defence lawyers Emma Priest and Harry Redwood have countered that their client had no idea he was entangled in an illegal drug scheme or that the cans were potentially dangerous. He was duped and exploited, they said, by a man who pleaded guilty to multiple drug charges on the eve of the trial. That man, 32, cannot be named due to an ongoing suppression order.
WhatsApp messages shown to jurors today appeared to show Kahlon running errands for the other man over several days in January 2023, instructed to purchase a large plastic bucket, surgical gloves, plastic sheets, a 5-litre chilli bin jug and a “glass utensil ... that would work on a hot plate or induction”.
Kahlon didn’t seem in the messages like someone flush with cash from the drug trade. At one point, he told the other man that a package of surgical gloves cost $21 in the store he was in so he would go to Pak’nSave, where he expected to find them cheaper.
“Just grab from here,” the other man instructed, according to a message translated from Punjabi. “Can’t waste time running around.”
But jurors were left with no doubt that the drug import operation was large-scale, regardless of whether Kahlon knew about it.
An agreed summary of facts handed out to the group this afternoon outlined in detail how the other man pleaded guilty earlier this month to possession of methamphetamine and cocaine for supply, importation of methamphetamine and importation of methamphetamine ingredient ephedrine.
The first importation, according to the document, involved 1440 cans of coconut water from India - some of which contained methamphetamine and ephedrine - that arrived in August 2021. Three months later, a shipment of 960 coconut water cans arrived from India. Both shipments had been taken to the Manukau warehouse, which was leased by the co-defendant with name suppression.
In April 2022, 3840 bottles of Red Stripe beer were imported from Canada and taken to the warehouse. Some of the empty bottles were later found to have meth residue via preliminary tests but did not undergo conclusive testing, the document states.
Police removed cans of Honey Bear beer from a Manukau warehouse in March 2023. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Then in January 2023, 28,800 cans of Honey Bear House Beer arrived from Canada and were taken to the warehouse, as well as 22,680 bottles of kombucha that were delivered from the United States. Those shipments formed the basis for some of the other defendant’s guilty pleas, the agreed facts state.
Prosecutors said at the start of the trial that Kahlon was trying to get rid of the “worthless” cans that didn’t contain meth by handing them off to friends and family.
Video shown to jurors today showed Kahlon coming and going from the Manukau warehouse multiple times between Feb 26 last year and March 9. Often, he was seen on camera interacting with the co-defendant at the site. On several occasions, he handled what Detective Sergeant Alistair Pringle described to jurors as 24-pack slabs of Honey Bear beer wrapped in cellophane.
The trial will not sit tomorrow. It is set to resume before Justice Kiri Tahana and the jury on Wednesday.
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.
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