Motorway jurors feel weight of killer concrete block

The 8kg lump of concrete that killed Christopher Currie.

The jury which will decide if a schoolboy committed murder when he threw a block of concrete from a motorway overbridge was yesterday asked to hold the 8kg missile.

As the 15-year-old's trial got under way in the High Court at Auckland, his lawyer said he acted without thinking and should not be facing a murder charge for the death of Christopher Currie.

The Taupo man died when the concrete smashed through his car windscreen. Prosecutors seeking a murder conviction say the attack was "cunning" and calculated, and that the boy later showed off to friends.

Members of Mr Currie's family wept in the public gallery yesterday.

The block that struck him sat in a glass box, and the Crown asked the jury to look at it and pick it up.

The lawyer for the accused, Lester Cordwell, said his client admitted responsibility for the death but said he was not guilty of murder, but manslaughter. Mr Cordwell told Justice Helen Winkelmann and the jury his client was not trying to escape responsibility. He said he did not intend to hurt anyone or appreciate that his actions could cause death.

"He wouldn't be the first 14-year-old who acted without thinking."

However, Crown prosecutor Aaron Perkins said the boy had chosen a large piece of concrete and hidden on the north side of the bridge so Mr Currie could not take evasive action.

"How can it possibly be said that he didn't intend some bodily harm to Mr Currie in choosing that piece of concrete to drop on a car travelling at 100km/h?"

The Crown contends the teenager, who has name suppression, dropped the concrete to gain notoriety among his friends. Evidence will be given that the boy, aged 14 at the time, turned up to school and made it known he was the one responsible.

The witnesses include a friend of the accused who acted as lookout on the night, and who has been granted immunity from prosecution by the Solicitor General.

Mr Currie's girlfriend, Helen McCreadie, is among the 35 Crown witnesses who will give evidence. She was sitting in the front passenger seat when the concrete block smashed through the Honda Civic's windscreen, hitting her boyfriend on the chin and fracturing his jaw.

Mr Currie was killed instantly, Mr Perkins said. "The car is still travelling along the motorway but he hasn't got his hands on the wheel any more. That's because he's dead, but she doesn't know that."