“I can’t live without you,” a man allegedly told his wife before their car plunged off a “cliff”.
Moments before, the woman had told him their marriage of 23 years was over and she had feelings for another man.
The husband, who has name suppression, appeared in the High Court at Palmerston North on Monday for the first day of his trial for her attempted murder.
In its opening statement, the Crown alleged the man had hoped to kill himself and his wife by deliberately driving off the road.
However, his lawyers say that was never his intention and despite the strain on the pair’s relationship he would never try to kill himself or his wife.
Crown prosecutor Deborah Davies told the court the pair’s relationship had become tense in the past several years.
She claimed the man had become controlling, angry and suspicious about his wife’s involvement with the man who owned the farm they worked and lived on.
In the weeks before the alleged murder attempt, the woman had gone to stay with relatives in Australia and the Crown said her husband tried relentlessly to contact her.
On the afternoon of June 9, 2022, the man drove to Wellington Airport to pick up his wife who had returned to the country.
He rejected offers from both his son and daughter to accompany him.
Once he picked her up, they began the nearly two-and-a-half hour drive back to their farm in rural Manawatū.
Not long into the trip, the man began questioning the woman about the state of their relationship and allegedly said he “couldn’t live without her”.
They stopped in Palmerston North to have dinner with their children. Their son later told police his father seemed out of sorts, Davies told the jury in her opening statement.
Their daughter asked her mother if she would like to ride in her car but the man insisted that she went with him.
During the remainder of the drive, the man asked more questions about their relationship which his wife didn’t want to answer.
However, on the final few bends of the gravel road before reaching their family home, the woman admitted she had feelings for the man that owned their farm and that their marriage was over, Davies said.
The man then allegedly said “I can’t live without you,” before accelerating towards a fence at the edge of the road and driving the car through it.
They plunged over the “cliff” and towards a creek bed but trees slowed the vehicle’s fall and snagged it roughly 40m down, Davies said.
From there, the woman crawled out of the passenger window and began to climb up the bank to the road’s edge.
When she heard her husband calling her name she was so terrified she zipped up her jacket so her white tee-shirt could not be seen in the dark and took off her Apple Watch in case it lit up, Davies told the jury.
She made her way to their house to find their daughter had also just arrived.
“Your father has just tried to kill me,” she alleged. They both ran to the farm owner’s house who took them inside and called the police and an ambulance for the woman who had scrapes and bruises from the crash.
Around 20 minutes later the man turned up at the property calling his wife’s name but the farm owner wouldn’t let him inside.
He was arrested soon after and told police he was tired and must have fallen asleep before the car went off the road.
“The Crown case is he accelerated down that road to try and kill his wife, and himself,” Davies told the jury.
“In that desperate moment, he truly felt he couldn’t live without her, which is the words he used.”
After the Crown and defence lawyers gave their opening statements, the wife was called to give evidence.
She told the court she and her husband had been married for more than 20 years and that he had always had a temper.
However, it had become worse in recent times and she’d had enough and wanted to leave him.
The woman said she went to Australia to see family and have a “break”.
When she got back to Wellington and into the car with her husband she said in evidence that they hadn’t left the carpark before he “started up” about the marriage.
“I kept trying to divert the conversation. It was just all about that, why I wouldn’t give him a second chance,” she said.
“I didn’t want to tell him the marriage had ended in the car … I just didn’t want to break his heart in the car, I also didn’t know how he was going to respond.”
But as he continued to question her, the woman “snapped” and said, “I’m done, I’m done, I’m done.”
After that, she felt the car accelerate and go through the fence at the edge of the road, she said from the witness box.
“I knew straight away what was happening and I remember screaming. I remember hitting the fence, the five wires oiling. I remember leaves, things hitting me around the throat …
“It was pitch black, I couldn’t see anything. I remember thinking I had to get out of there. I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
The woman recalled climbing out the window and scrambling for 20 minutes up the cliff.
“I could hear him yelling … I didn’t want to answer him,” she said. “It was weird it didn’t sound like him … it sounded awful.”
Hearing her daughter’s car drive along the road above her gave her the strength to keep climbing, and then run the rest of the distance to their home.
She and her daughter were hiding in the farm owner’s bedroom as her husband banged on the windows of the man’s house.
“I was absolutely terrified, just curled up in a ball just crying.”
Defence lawyer Steve Winter referred to what the Crown called a cliff as a “steep decline”, and questioned the wife’s recollection of events.
He asked whether the woman specifically remembered her husband saying “if there’s no you, there’s no me,” before accelerating at the corner.
She remained adamant under cross-examination that she was sure of what he had said, saying she “relived it most nights”.
Winter said technical data from the vehicle’s computer showed the car turned 54 degrees to the left, indicating the man tried to take the corner rather than drive straight over the edge.
He put to the woman that her husband had been tired and stopped the car and asked her to drive, which she strongly rejected.
“The car stopped, and you know it did,” Winter said.
“No, I don’t remember that happening,” she replied.
Winter said three witnesses would later give evidence that the woman had said her husband did stop the car and ask her to drive.
The trial is set down for the week.
Locals want more certainty about the swept-away bridge's future.