Adrian Phillips has told the High Court he was scared Bayden Williams was going to stab and kill him so he shot at Williams to protect himself. Photo / Mike Scott
Adrian Phillips has told the High Court he was scared Bayden Williams was going to stab and kill him so he shot at Williams to protect himself. Photo / Mike Scott
Adrian Phillips felt "like a bit of a man" when he told friends he would make Bayden Williams sorry for humiliating him, in the months before he shot Williams dead.
Phillips is on trial for the murder of Williams, 20, on the night of August 5, 2020 on the Kopu-Hikuai Rd near Thames.
He has admitted shooting Williams three times, including in the head, but denies murder, claiming the shooting was self-defence.
During cross-examination by the Crown, Phillips told the High Court in Hamilton on Wednesday he didn't mean the comments about hurting Williams.
"I didn't have a desire to hurt him. It just made me feel like a bit of a man. I never meant it."
When asked by Crown prosecutor Jacinda Hamilton if it was his evidence that talking about hurting Williams "made you feel like a man", Phillips said it made him feel "more like a man and less like a loser".
"It made me feel less soft."
When asked what he meant when he wrote that Williams would "be sorry when I'm done with them", Phillips said he only meant when he was done "talking" to Williams.
Hamilton put to Phillips his anger had been steadily growing since an altercation in January that year during which Williams got the better of Phillips by restraining him.
Phillips, 24, admitted he was angry but said he had tried to put the altercation behind him.
His girlfriend Macy Randall's evidence earlier in the trial described Phillips as being "angry with an anger that never stopped".
The jury heard that on the day before Williams was shot three times by Phillips, he asked Macy's mother Paula Randall to let her know the next time Williams would visit her daughter Chloe Randall in Thames.
Bayden Williams, 20, was shot dead on the Kopu-Hikuai Rd near Thames in August 2020. His killer Adrian Phillips has denied murder and claims it was self-defence. Photo / NZME
Chloe, the twin sister of Macy, and Williams had a baby son together and were reigniting their relationship.
During that conversation, Phillips told Paula the situation was personal between him and Williams.
She told him not to beat up Williams and that she didn't want Phillips to get in any trouble.
Hamilton asked Phillips why he didn't pick up the phone and ring Williams to settle his grievance instead of ambushing him on an isolated road, taking Williams by surprise.
Phillips said he was worried Williams' father Lance would find out. He felt traumatised by Lance Williams' assault on Macy and Chloe's father Peter Randall during the January altercation when Peter was strangled as Phillips lay restrained by the younger Williams.
Hamilton explored Phillips' anger issues and frequent outbursts at people where he would "fly into a rage".
Phillips said he was worried about his mental state and went to his GP for help.
He told his doctor he thought about running people off the road.
"You had become irritable and short-tempered to the point where you thought about hurting people," Hamilton said.
"Yes," Phillips replied. "But you've got to understand it's really not me. It was just during these really difficult episodes when I couldn't manage my emotions."
Phillips said although it probably appeared to everyone else he was losing his temper, it was actually that he was unable to manage extreme levels of stress.
Adrian Phillips was humiliated after Bayden Williams held him down during a fight in January 2020, and wanted an apology from the younger man. Photo / Mike Scott
Phillips admitted he was psychologically troubled after he was badly burned in a bonfire explosion in December 2018 when he accidentally set himself alight while pouring an accelerant on the flames.
In his earlier evidence, he admitted banging his head against the wall, smoking cannabis daily to relieve his anxiety, and regularly thinking about suicide.
Macy's evidence was that Phillips raged at her at least once a day, Hamilton said.
"Mr Phillips, they were the signs of a very angry man, weren't they?"
"Yes," he said. "But you've got to understand I wasn't like that before my burns."
After the burns, which required four surgeries for skin grafts to his left hand, Phillips went on and off anti-depressant medication and eventually quit his job as an apprentice mechanic.
He said both the explosion and the altercation had left him humiliated and embarrassed.
However, Hamilton put to Phillips that before the bonfire explosion, he got into an argument with his then boss and was dismissed from his job.
And looking back whether he had anxiety all his life and was an angry child.
Phillips said he didn't lose his temper when he left his first job and that it was possible he had suffered anxiety since he was young.
She also asked him about his comments to a counsellor about his concern he might lose control and assault a colleague because they were giving him a hard time and felt he wasn't pulling his weight.
"Is it fair to say by January 2020 you had become quite confrontational when people didn't do what you wanted them to do?," Hamilton asked.
In one "explosion" of anger, Phillips assaulted Macy after she held a lighter in front of his face to stop him driving recklessly with her in the car.
In response he put his thumb inside her mouth, pushed her head onto the passenger window so hard the inside of her cheek tore, and then punched her arm.
Earlier that year Phillips messaged a friend about his landlord during which he wrote: "... anyone who crosses me can deal with psycho me".
"And then did you go on and ask him if you could borrow his guns?," Hamilton asked.
"Yes, I did but then I went on to say 'Ha ha ha, just kidding'. It was just a joke."
In July that year Phillips bought a sawn-off shotgun from a friend, which he later used to shoot Williams.
