Sao Yean, also known as Sao Young, was found dead face down in a water trough on a Gordonton farm three years ago. Photo / Supplied
Sao Yean, also known as Sao Young, was found dead face down in a water trough on a Gordonton farm three years ago. Photo / Supplied
A man was allegedly beaten with a hockey stick and Tasered “till the battery went flat”, before being driven at gunpoint to a Hamilton house where a gang member overdosed.
Jesse Whitiora, 35, took to the stand today during the trial at the High Court at Hamilton where four people are accused of murdering Sao Yean, also known as Young, during the early hours of March 13, 2020.
Whitiroa, giving evidence via audio-visual link, said he went to the New Year’s Eve party at Christopher Matatahi’s Casey Ave home on New Year’s Eve in 2019.
He, together with Matatahi, also known as CZN, and several others took what they thought was MDMA.
Matatahi would die hours later while Whitiora, his girlfriend, two others would be hospitalised.
However, three months later, the crown alleges Mihingarangi Tynneal Rameka wanted retribution for his death, and hauled in Neha Wiremu Grey and Daniel James Payne to find those responsible.
The trio, together with Anton Rite, are defending a charge of murder in relation to Yean’s death.
Daniel Payne in the dock at the Hamilton High Court standing trial for the murder of Sao Yean aka Sao Young in March 2020. Photo / Belinda Feek
The crown alleges the four beat Mongrel Mob notorious member Dean Mihinui on March 3, before targeting Whitiora on March 12 and Yean hours later, before Grey and Rite are accused of dumping Yean’s body in a water trough on a Gordonton property.
In questioning from crown prosecutor Duncan McWilliam, Whitiora recalled being at Matatahi’s house and having “a minuscule amount” of the drug which forensic testing would later discover as laced with heroin.
Soon after, he recalled the girls at the house started spewing and began getting concerned.
He and his friend, Zahra-Rose Marsh, got in the car to leave and fell asleep waiting for his girlfriend, Grace McGrannachan, to also get in.
He woke, discovering she wasn’t there, and went back into the house, and first saw Matatahi lying on his back in a bedroom.
“He looked like he had been spewing as there was stuff coming out of each side of the mouth and it made me hit the roof.”
However, he walked out of the room and saw McGrannachan down the hall, frothing at the mouth, and tried to “bring her back to life”.
As he tried various things to wake her, he recalled someone running down the hallway saying, “he’s gone, he’s gone”.
Mihingarangi Tynneal Rameka. Photo / Belinda Feek
Whitiora said due to the state of his girlfriend he hadn’t had a chance to check Matatahi’s pulse so was confused, and replied, “gone where?”
The person said, “he’s gone, he’s dead”.
McGrannachan’s eyes then began rolling back in her head and he was “hysterically trying to get Grace back to life”.
They kept repeating, “you gave the drugs, you gave the drugs, what the f*** did you do to our brother”.
From then on, he was “beaten”, and had a hockey stick smashed over his left thigh.
He managed to fight his way to the front door but was then hit over the head, allegedly, by Rameka with a blunt object, and had a Taser used on his left arm “till the battery went flat”.
While he did think of running, he knew it would only make his situation worse.
He was then told to “wait for the bros to turn up and sort it out” and made to sit down as blood streamed down his face.
The two men turned up, one he knew as “Damage”, and he was again asked about CZN’s death.
Whitiroa implored that he was innocent and had nothing to do with the drugs.
He was put into the back seat of a car, “Damage” drove while the man with the mask on held a shotgun to his head as he was driven to Casey Ave - where he understood he would die in the same place as Matatahi.
Neha Wiremu Grey. Photo / Belinda Feek
Arriving there, a woman came out and the man with the mask said, “we got him sis, we got him”, and was told by the man in the mask it was “time to die”.
The woman then went “absolutely ballistic”, he said, saying “you have got the wrong fulla, get him the f*** off my property, you don’t know how much you have f***** up”.
Whitiora will continue to give evidence tomorrow.
The Crown case
Opening the Crown case, McWilliam alleged all four defendants were at Rameka’s Byron Rd when Yean was either fatally, or critically, beaten and all of them acted with a common unlawful purpose.
He submitted their case centred around Rameka who they allege provided drugs that led to Matatahi’s death and hospitalised three others.
That allegedly led Rameka to seek retribution, later drawing in Payne, and leading to two serious beatings of Dean Mihinui and Whitiora, before Yean was brought to her home during the early hours of March 13, 2020.
McWilliam said Yean was bashed so significantly he suffered fractures to his skull, jaw/chin area, eye socket, and hand, while his shoulder blade was fractured to the point it was a “clean break”.
Lawyer Jessica Tarrant, on behalf of her client Grey, told the jury the only thing he was responsible for was helping Rite dispose of Yean’s body in Gordonton.
That should only have seen him charged with being an accessory after the murder - not murder itself.
“He could not, and will not, accept responsibility for anything else.”
