Wife who killed husband after 111 call guilty of manslaughter

Dale Wickham. Photo / Paul Estcourt

An Auckland woman with multiple sclerosis has been found guilty of manslaughter after shooting her husband at close range in the chest with a shotgun.

Dale Wickham, 62, collapsed as she waited for the verdict in an interview room at the High Court in Auckland yesterday.

Wickham was charged with murdering her husband, John, in their West Auckland home in October last year.

She was found not guilty of murder.

Her lawyers argued she killed him in self-defence after he pushed her over, threw a bottle of spirits at her and threatened to "gut you like a fish".

The Crown argued Wickham was angry and hurt because her husband of 42 years was about to leave her.

Two St John Ambulance paramedics were called to the High Court in Auckland yesterday where Wickham was assessed and taken to hospital in a wheel chair with an oxygen mask over her face.

Wickham's lawyer Michele Wilkinson-Smith told the judge that her client had suffered a multiple sclerosis attack.

"She is fairly unwell and not able to speak or walk," Ms Wilkinson-Smith said.

Justice Rebecca Ellis initially suppressed any reporting of Wickham's hospitalisation on the grounds that the jury could have read of her admission overnight. She lifted the suppression once the verdict was delivered by the jury.

Wickham's multiple slerosis has played a large part in the case.

Lawyer Sanjay Patel told the court on Tuesday that Wickham was too weak to run when her husband attacked her. He said Wickham had called police, but did not feel safe and went to her bedroom to get one of her two shotguns.

According to Wickham, her husband saw the gun and laughed before he came towards her saying "I will gut you like a fish".

Mr Patel said Mr Wickham also told his wife: "You're so weak, all I have to do is throw your body in the pool. No one will find you".

He told the jury: "It's not about whether Dale Wickham shouldn't have confronted her husband, or if she should have hidden in her room and hoped the police would not take long. It is certainly not about whether you would have reacted differently. It is about self-defence."

Mr Patel cited evidence from a friend of Wickham who told the court Mr Wickham had said he planned to help his wife commit suicide when her multiple sclerosis worsened.

"But the worrying thing about that is that Dale and John never discussed it."

Mr Patel also quoted a conversation between Mr Wickham and a friend in which Mr Wickham is alleged to have said: "If you can put an animal out of its misery, you should be able to put a human being out of its misery".

"She saw the gun as something she could use to keep her safe," Mr Patel said.

But Crown prosecutor Ross Burns told the jury that Mrs Wickham could have locked herself in her en suite bathroom and waited for police to arrive.

"She could have sat on the toilet seat with the loaded gun, the door locked, and said: 'If you come in, I'll blow your head off'."

Mr Burns also referred to the 111 emergency call Wickham made minutes before shooting her husband dead.

The emergency operator said: "We'll be there shortly. Is there anyone with you?"

Wickham replied: "No, but that's all right."

"She knew police would be there shortly," Mr Burns said.

"By the time police arrived, within three minutes of her call, her husband was dead on the floor of a shotgun wound," he said.

"By the eighth of October, she was getting more angry, her marriage was deteriorating. She was getting to let off steam about the man she no longer liked or the man who was about to leave her unsupported in a home on her own."

Mr Burns said Wickham was called names and verbally abused by her husband but that did not give her the right to shoot him dead.

"He's not just a pale figure in a photograph, it is a real human life that has been taken."

The jury had been deliberating since 4pm on Tuesday.