Justice Christine Grice is hearing the trial with a jury of eight women and four men. Photo / Bevan Conley
Justice Christine Grice is hearing the trial with a jury of eight women and four men. Photo / Bevan Conley
Warning: Distressing content
Taylor-Jade Hira had bleeding around her brain and more than 50 bruises and abrasions on her body, as well as healing rib and spine fractures, on the night she was taken to hospital.
The 55kg, 171cm, 22-year-old woman died from “complications of blunt force trauma”, according to a summary of her post-mortem examination read to the jury at a trial in the High Court at Napier on Tuesday.
Ranapera Taumata, 30, who was in a relationship with Hira at the time, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Hira and an associated charge of injuring her with intent to injure.
The court has been told that Taumata, his sister and his mother, took Hira to Hawke’s Bay Hospital in Hastings in the early hours of August 15, 2019.
She was assessed and flown to Wellington Hospital, where she died when her life-support system was switched off three days later.
The Crown has previously said that her head injuries were “unsurvivable”.
On Tuesday, Taumata’s mother gave evidence about being called to the sleepout behind her Hastings house, where Taylor-Jade often stayed with the accused.
Tania Ratima-McCullough said it was an “awful fright” to see Taylor-Jade lying on a bed with her arms crossed, hands touching, on her chest.
“She was just lying there. Her eyes were in the back of her head, like. Here eyes were open but ... they had gone back.”
The young woman was breathing but “it was not normal. It was like a groaning, grunting breathing”.
Taylor-Jade Hira died in 2019. Photo / Supplied
Napier Crown Solicitor Steve Manning asked Ratima-McCullough what she thought about that.
“Something terrible had happened to her,” she replied.
The court has previously seen security camera footage which charted Taumata, sister Alana Taumata and Ratima-McCullough driving Hira to the hospital Emergency Department about 1km away.
“I said to Alana and Ranapera that we need to take Taylor to the hospital. We need to go now,” Ratima-McCullough said.
“We didn’t ring the hospital, we took her to the hospital. It was faster [than calling an ambulance].”
Ranapera Taumata, 30, is being tried in the High Court at Napier. Photo / Ric Stevens
The post-mortem summary said that Hira presented to the hospital with “multiple injuries” and was found to have a subdural haemorrhage – bleeding in the space that surrounds the brain.
The autopsy confirmed the presence of other bleeding around the brain and associated swelling of brain tissue.
“The injuries were diffuse in nature with at least three distinct locations of haemorrhage: right face/temple, left face, and left parietal-occipital scalp (back to side of the left head),” the summary said.
“The right face temple injury was quite large and may include more than one impact,” it said.
“The left scalp haemorrhage seems distinct from the left frontal cranial pressure monitor.”
The summary also noted healing rib and spine fractures, and bruising over Hira’s face and upper extremities.
The court on Tuesday was also presented with an agreed summary of Taumata’s intellectual disabilities.
It said he had been assessed as having an IQ of between 64 and 72, with a score of 67, placing him on the cusp of the “borderline” and “extremely low” categories of intellectual functioning and in the lowest 1 per cent to 2.5 per cent of the population.
His low intellectual functioning meant he was slow to process information in real time. He found it difficult to process complex or large amounts of verbal information.
Special arrangements have been made for Taumata at the trial, including having him participate from a separate room with the aid of a communications assistant.
The trial finished hearing evidence on Tuesday, its sixth day.
Manning and defence counsel Andrew Shulze are expected to sum up on Wednesday.
The trial is being heard by Justice Christine Grice and a jury of eight women and four men.
