Murder charge after death in Glenmall carpark: Brayden Towler on trial over road rage death in West Auckland

Brayden Andrew Towler, accused of murder using a vehicle as a weapon, appears at the High Court at Auckland. Photo / Michael Craig

Steve Braunias investigates the moment that road rage in Glen Eden turned, and a man was hit and killed by a Holden.

Glen Eden is one of the prime bogan territories of West Auckland, a zone of good times, close loyalties, loud music, Jim Beam, high speed; the last stop before the fast road winding through bush to the wild surf of Bethells and other wide open spaces.

The township is small and cramped and narrow. It’s in a low valley between a pretty row of very tall gum trees and the whispering glades of Waikumete Cemetery. Little alleyways cross a stream towards Glenmall, a shopping lane with the usual low-income emporiums - a vape shop, a $2 shop, a Work and Income dole shop. There’s an excellent second-hand bookstore and a little space devoted to knitting supplies.

Brayden Towler and a woman later described by one witness as having red hair, and by another witness as having pink hair, went to Glenmall on the Wednesday afternoon of November 23, 2022. He drove a black Holden.

Marie Taateo and her partner Petunu Talitumu (“Everyone knows him as Tim,” Marie said) went there at the same time. She drove a white Ford Territory. Towler took a sharp left and cut in front of her at 12.07pm. There were the classic little symptoms of everyday road rage - shouts, a honked horn, a raised middle finger. At 12.08pm, Tim was dead, driven into at speed, the black Holden hitting him as he stood on the street and tried to jump out of the way, smashing into the windscreen and falling into the gutter outside the excellent second-hand bookstore.

For the past week, courtroom 7 at the High Court of Auckland has concerned itself with the anatomy of road rage. Towler is charged with murder. He has pleaded not guilty.

Marie Taateo gave evidence through tears, and other witnesses described what they saw, including a family who acted with considerable heroism, each of them casting very proud figures in court, each of them wearing a beautifully inked moko.

The jury of 12 - it was nearly reduced to 11 on Tuesday, when a chair suddenly collapsed beneath a hapless juror - will likely deliver its verdict next week.

No one disputes that Towler drove into and killed Talitumu.

But mysteries remain, not least whether Towler really was aiming his Holden straight at his victim. There is also some confusion about what exactly happened in that fast, abrupt, seething minute between 12.07 and 12.08 of Auckland road rage gone wrong in the worst way.

Petunu Talitumu was with his partner Marie Taateo when he died in West Auckland.

Crown prosecutors Claire Paterson and Kristy Li called Marie Taateo as their first witness. She said she had been in a relationship with Tim for two and a half years, and friends for four years.

They drove to Glenmall that Wednesday in November - a warm day, blue skies - for a late breakfast. They were driving along the thin strip of Glenmall Place. “And then a black Holden came zooming out,” she told the court. “Just came out of nowhere. No indicator. Nothing. I beeped my horn and he put his head out the window and told me to f**k up or he’d put a bullet in me.”

In response to Towler’s alleged threat, she decided to follow the Holden along Glenmall Place. A car chase at midday in West Auckland, at 12.07pm: a minute later, there would be another, even more extraordinary car chase.

According to Taateo, their procession along Glenmall Place was mainly conducted in silence. They drove past an organics shop, a pet shop, a self-service laundromat - on CCTV footage played in court, a woman walked along the pavement holding a clothes basket. Another woman sat on a bench, smoking a cigarette. Tim got out of the passenger seat and stood on the Ford’s running board, holding onto the roof railings. She told him to get back in the car. “He was smiling,” she told the court.

Adam Couchman is defending Towler. In his opening address, he told the jury it was a case of road rage – in one direction, coming from the couple in the Ford and directed at the couple in the Holden.

No one other than Taateo heard Towler threaten her with a bullet. The prosecution called witness Shaylai Tavia to give evidence; she owns a barber shop in Glen Eden and was sitting outside for a smoke when she heard arguing.

“A woman’s voice, shrill and loud, yelling,” she said, meaning Taateo.

“She’s mouthing off, and the driver of the Holden is mouthing back. He raises a middle finger, like a ‘F**k you, I’m on my way’, and she yells, ‘You want to run your f***king mouth off now?’ She was pursuing him. It just appeared there was going to be an altercation. Her passenger was hanging out the window, with his elbow on the car. It looked threatening. I thought he was going to attack the guy.”

In cross-examination, she expanded on what she saw. The Ford, she said, was “tailgating” the Holden: “It was getting quite close, and she was revving the engine.”

Couchman: “Was she aggressive in her conduct?”

“Yeah.”

Glenmall Place turns into the busy two lanes of Glendale Rd. When the Holden got to the corner, the Ford drew alongside, boxing it in; Petunu Talitumu jumped off the running board and hit the back of the Holden, either with his fist (according to one witness) or his hand (another witness). It was his final action.

The Holden turned left onto Glendale Rd. The Ford found a park. Tim stayed on the road, on the edge of a pedestrian crossing. He was bearded, one witness said. He was heavily built, another witness said. He was wearing socks beneath a pair of crocs.

And then the Holden executed a sudden U-turn back towards Tim and the Ford, picked up speed, and swerved onto the wrong side of the street directly towards where Tim was standing. “It was then that I knew his intentions,” Marie told the court.

“He was either coming for the car, or coming for Tim.”

It was 12.08pm. The Holden was travelling at 50km/h (according to one witness) or 70km/h (according to another witness) when it hit Tim.

Forensic pathologist Kilak Kesha gave evidence on Thursday. He has experienced a busy week: his workload included an examination of the body of a small Asian woman found in a bag in Gulf Harbour.

He was at the High Court to describe Tim’s injuries. He described and described and described, listing bruises to the right upper eyelid and back of the tongue, lacerations to the inside of both lips, abrasions to the left little toe, eggshell fractures to the skull, and two large wounds above the ear, one 4cm in length and the other 5cm.

“Brain matter was coming out of the wounds,” he said.

“Bone chips had projected inside the brain.

“The brain was so damaged that I couldn’t put it back together to make an anatomical examination.

“There were blunt-force head injuries so catastrophic that survivability was zero,” Kesha said.

All that calm recitation of horror, but maybe the worst thing he said was about the second, or split-second, before impact. Most pedestrians struck by cars have bumper injuries to their legs, he explained, but there were no fractures or injuries to Tim’s legs. “It means he jumped,” he said, “which implies he saw it coming.”

The police and Crown case is that Towler deliberately drove at Tim. They also accused him of a hit and run, of driving away from the scene at speed, then later hiding the car under a black sheet and taking off the license plate. The defence case is that it was an accident. “He accepts responsibility for the victim’s death,” Couchman told the jury. “But he didn’t see him until it was too late.”

CCTV footage records the moment of impact. But it’s played on a silent screen, and from an angle, and at a distance; the reality of it would have been loud - the burn-out of tyres as Towler executed a U-turn on his handbrake, the engine either a V6 or V8 (a witness couldn’t be sure), Tim hitting the windscreen and smashing it with such force that it caved in and touched the steering wheel.

The shattered windscreen of Brayden Towler's black Holden. Photo / NZ Police

Marie Taateo wept in the witness box when she described leaning over her partner’s body and trying to put pieces of his brain back in his head.

Trauma, too, for an amazing witness. Kat McCormick saw what happened. She was in Glen Eden with her husband and their three daughters. They were leaving a medical centre. They saw the U-turn, the impact, the getaway. Right then and there, they decided to act out the second instance of something rare and dangerous that day: a car chase.

McCormick was behind the wheel. She said in court: “I was obviously shocked. Yeah. It was a lot to see. He was lying on the ground, seizing. Yellow flesh coming out his head. I knew he was going to die if not dead already. My partner said, ‘He’s gone’. It was at that point I took chase. It was either flight or fight, and I didn’t want him to get away with it. I was on a mission.

“I made eye contact with him in the side mirror. I heard my daughter yell out, ‘Gun! Gun! He’s got a gun!’ I saw what looked to be a handgun. It was outside of the vehicle. He was holding it in his hand against the door. We made eye contact again. He was looking at me as I was looking at him. That to me meant, ‘Back off’. I pulled straight back.”

Crown prosecutor Claire Paterson asked, “Why?’

She said, “He’d just run someone over and I didn’t want to see how much further he’d go.”

A plastic gun found in the back seat of the Holden. Witnesses say Brayden Towler waved it in a threatening manner. Photo / NZ Police

The issue of the gun is a kind of sub-plot to the trial. Towler faces a second charge, of presenting a firearm; police later searched his house and car and photographed a black toy pistol in the back seat of the Holden. Not actually a firearm. Actually a plastic toy.

But was it actually even in his hand? Towler denies it. When McCormick was cross-examined, the defence suggested to her that Towler wasn’t holding any kind of gun, that what she saw was a black sleeve wrapped around his hand. No, she said. “It looked like a gun that you’d see on CSI. I’m a pretty action-TV kind of person.”

Yes, McCormick said to Couchman, her kids were screaming and crying in the back seat, everyone was freaking out and running on adrenalin.

“But I seen what I seen,” she said. “You didn’t see out of my eyes... I’m a very observant person.”

Yes, she admitted to Couchman, she had denied passing a car to catch up to the Holden, but accepted that the CCTV footage showed that she did. Well, he said to her, if she was mistaken about that, perhaps she was mistaken about the gun, too. She replied, “I’ll never forget his dark eyes just like I’ll never forget I saw a gun.”

A good memory can be a curse. “It’s been pretty traumatic. I stayed in my home for six months afterwards. It’s changed my life. I’ve tried hard to bloody forget it,” she said, “but I can’t escape it.”

Gun, or clothing; Towler hellbent on wanting to whack Tim in the street, or Towler driving too fast to avoid hitting him… They are crucial distinctions, moving parts in the complicated anatomy of a road rage that ended in violent death.

But some things are clear, cannot be disputed, are true and simple facts.

Asked in court why she took chase even though she had three kids in the back seat, and had just witnessed something horrific, McCormick said: “It was the right thing to do.”