Stevens, together with Elizabeth Hall, is representing Hendrix Kahia – the man who is charged with murder. But, Kahia claims it wasn’t him and is pointing the finger at Tareha.
Shortly before the stabbing, Birch had been spotted in the backyard of a Black Power Hinemoa Ave property peeping into a toilet window.
Birch, who was yelling Mongrel Mob slogans, claimed he was urinating, and a fight ensued out on the street with Hendrix Kahia’s brother, Raymond “Porky” Kahia.
The fighting stopped and Birch and his girlfriend, Waimarama Nicoll, began walking home along Hinekura Ave when a car, holding Tareha, the Kahia brothers and a fourth man, pulled up alongside them.
At least two of the men jumped out and Raymend Kahia started beating Birch, and then he was stabbed.
It is now the third time the case has been heard.
‘I’m a gangster, I can get any woman I want’
Tareha accepted he asked Hendrix Kahia if he wanted to prospect for him, but when asked what that meant, he said, “not a hell of a lot”.
“That’s why you stabbed Wiremu Birch,” Stevens said.
“I didn’t get out of my car. I didn’t stab anybody.”
Stevens put to Tareha that he was trying to be “the man”.
“I am the man. I got the house keys, I got the car keys and I got the job.
“And I got the money,” Tareha replied.
Stevens referred to Tareha yelling “7 f****** 9″ – a Black Power reference – out the car window as they drove away from the scene, and he suggested Tareha was showing off.
“Yeah, I think so,” Tareha said.
“You were trying to be the gangster weren’t you?”
“I already am a gangster,” Tareha replied.
“You were trying to be a gangster,” Stevens repeated.
“I already am a gangster. There’s a big difference.”
After repeated to-and-fro, Tareha continued denying knowing what “7 f****** 9″ meant when Stevens mentioned the number “7″ he had tattooed on his leg.
“And 9 on the other one, yeah,” Tareha replied.
Stevens also put to the witness that he was “boasting” afterwards that he had “stuck a knife in Wiremu Birch”.
“Why would I say something like that,” Tareha asked.
“Because you’re gangster,” Stevens replied.
His contact with Birch’s girlfriend Nicoll after the killing was also brought up, and Tareha said he didn’t contact her, but she contacted him.
“Because of the way she is, I wasn’t just going to ignore her . . . I was just trying to be a supportive person.
“My intent was just to care about her.
“If she needs me I’m f****** there. I don’t give a f***.
“I will break any bail condition,” referring to the bail condition that he not contact her in late 2013.
Stevens also put to the witness that he didn’t like it when he saw Birch and Nicoll back together in 2013.
“I’m a gangster. I can get any woman I want.”
When it was put to him that a detective would give evidence that Tareha told him, “everyone was blaming me”, Tareha replied that he was “trying to defend himself in something that you can’t escape from”.
“If you look at it now, how many trials have we been through and you still got to say blaming.
“We can’t escape from this. We can’t run away from this,” he said.
Stevens told him another witness would give evidence that Tareha had a knife in his car three weeks before the stabbing.
“Nah. Have you got that in writing? I want to see that.”
Tareha also denied using drugs, stating, “I sold them but I didn’t use them”.
“So is methamphetamine not a drug?” Stevens asked.
“Nah,” he said.
Stevens put to Tareha that police found a meth pipe on him and his DNA was found on it.
“Probably,” Tareha said.
‘Two whacks and it was over’
Earlier, Tareha recalled driving along Hinekura Ave and coming across Birch and Nicoll and slowing down, saying out loud, “Is that them?”
He claimed Raymond “Porky” Kahia replied, “Yeah, that’s the c***.”
Tareha told Crown solicitor Chris Macklin that three of them, including Hendrix Kahia, got out but he stayed in the car.
Nicoll came up to him, screaming, and she put her hand through his window and he pushed her away.
He said he drove the car up to the intersection with Rifle Range Rd and watched the fight unfold from there.
He saw Porky go up to Birch and the pair started fighting and then he saw the back of Hendrix Kahia’s blue and black hoodie.
“Then I just saw this motion . . . it was like, unexpected,” before demonstrating to the jury a stabbing motion using his right arm.
“Wiremu didn’t even see it coming. Nobody saw it coming.
“I saw Hendrix coming like this, I saw Wiremu’s head go down and Hendrix went in and did it again . . . then all of a sudden Wiremu’s in the bush.
“[He] walked in, two whacks, and then it was over.”
‘It really f***** me up’
Tareha accepted they had been smoking meth in the hours leading up to Birch’s death.
Asked about the effect the drug had on him, he said it was “massive”.
“I believe that it brought me here today.
“[I felt] real lost and confused. Like it really f***** me up. I lost a lot of stuff along the way. I lost my family, I lost myself, I lost my job.
“I lost everything that really meant the world to me.”
The trial, being overseen by Justice Timothy Brewer, continues.
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for nine years and has been a journalist for 20.
