Police speak with a witness near Jellicoe Park on the night Nigel Fuatimu was found dead. Photo / Hayden Woodward
Police speak with a witness near Jellicoe Park on the night Nigel Fuatimu was found dead. Photo / Hayden Woodward
A long night of singing and dancing to Samoan music - accompanied by heavy drinking and loud whooping - turned into a nightmare two years ago when four friends were blindsided and attacked by strangers on the dark, unlit soccer field at a residential Manurewa park.
That's what three of the men have told jurors in the High Court at Auckland this week at the murder trial of Isaac Ramese-Stanley and Simon Tavita. The fourth friend, Nigel Fuatimu, 21, died that night.
Prosecutors contend Ramese-Stanley, 26, and Tavita, 25, were angry about the loud music coming from the Jellicoe Park field when they approached the other group at 11pm on October 3, 2020. Both defendants kicked Fuatimu in the head and neck, causing him to lose consciousness, before one of them picked up a concrete block and used it to bash his head, prosecutors allege.
Fereti Timu'a, 23, told jurors today that he, Fuatimu and their two other friends were all co-workers and were cutting loose after a Saturday shift. When asked to rate his friends' drunkenness on a scale of 1 to 10, he said one friend would have been 10 but Fuatimu was about three and he was five or six.
The group started out at a nearby home but eventually took the party to the park along with a large portable speaker and several boxes of canned pre-mixed drinks, all three witnesses said.
"We socialised and we sang songs," Timu'a said through a Samoan interpreter, later acknowledging under cross-examination that they also frequently "woohooed" loudly. "We just sang along and drank."
Nigel Fuatimu, 21, died at Jellicoe Park in Manurewa on Oct 3, 2020. Photo / Supplied
Then without warning, he said, he was punched in the nose by a stranger he hadn't known was there and fell to the ground. He was kicked as he held his arms over his face before getting up and running away, he told jurors.
Timu'a testimony was similar to that of friend Tauafai Collins, who spent all of Tuesday and part of Wednesday on the witness stand. He had been friends with Fuatimu - who was his brother-in-law, housemate and co-worker - for about 11 years. He described Fuatimu as happy, reliable person.
"We wanted to play loud music," he said of the decision to move the small gathering from the garage of a nearby house to the park, explaining that no one else was there when they arrived in the field. "We were all happy - just enjoying our night."
But after about 20 minutes he heard a different voice and turned around to see two strangers had also arrived at the park.
"Your music's too loud," he recalled one of the men saying, adding that the man "sounded angry".
"As I turned around, I saw one of them chucked something, but I didn't know what it was."
He then saw Fuatimu in a "bear hug" with one of the strangers on the ground, who he described as about six feet tall, skinny and with a "man bun", while another stranger described as having a "fat build" was standing over and kicking Timu'a.
Emergency services near the cordon at Jellicoe Park. Photo / Hayden Woodward
"I ran and pushed Nigel off - pulled him up," he said. "Then I turned around and I ran to Fred [Timu'a]. I pushed the dude who was kicking Fred off."
He and Timu'a then ran back towards the house but returned after noticing Fuatimu wasn't with him, both men said.
"When we came back to the park two males was kicking Nigel...in the head and body," Collins testified. "I was getting close and they ran off."
The witness took a long pause, looking down into his lap, as prosecutors displayed a photo of his friend's body splayed on the grass - his shirt still lifted from Collins' attempt to give CPR followed by paramedics' failed efforts to revive him.
Defence lawyer Andrew Speed, who represents Ramese-Stanley, suggested during cross-examination that Collins' recollections on the witness stand about seeing two men kicking his friend were "radically different" from what he told police in the days following the incident. It also didn't match his recorded conversation with the 111 operator that night in which he said he didn't see what happened, Speed added.
"It was still raw. I wasn't in my right mind," Collins replied, insisting that this testimony this week has been truthful and correct. "I saw two people kicking Nigel."
Joining Ramese-Stanley and Tavita on trial is a third defendant, Kitiona Stanley, 28, who is charged with assault with intent to injure. Prosecutors say he and a fourth defendant chased down and attacked one of Fuatimu's friends, Samtuiosa Osa, as he tried to run away from the park that night. Osa did not suffer life-threatening injuries but they then took his pants and wallet, authorities allege.
The fourth man, Andy Tofaeono, also known as Andy Moataa, has previously pleaded guilty to attacking Osa, so he has not joined his co-defendants in court this week.
Stanley's lawyer, Tua Saseve, told jurors earlier that his client was "not involved in any way" in either of the alleged attacks.
"Indeed, it was Mr Kitiona Stanley who pulled up his friend ... and told him to stop what he was doing to Mr Osa," the lawyer said, explaining that Osa appeared to Stanley to be unconscious. "He went to check on him, to try to wake him up."
When that didn't work, Saseve said, his client turned the stranger onto his side so he wouldn't choke before leaving.
Testifying today, Osa said through an interpreter that he started to run towards the entrance to the park after he was punched in the eye without warning. But two people caught up to him and started throwing punches, he said.
"That's when I blacked out," he added. "When I came around, I found out I had no shoes, my bag is not there and so is my pants."
Osa, who was described by his friends as the most intoxicated of the group, returned to the nearby home, where he lived with his parents, and was asked by his mother where his clothes were.
"I don't know what was going on with all of us that night," he said. "The only thing I remember was when I got punched."
