The teenage niece of a man allegedly murdered with a crowbar claims “more than 30″ Mongrel Mob members walked up the driveway of their whānau home, barking and making other noises, moments before her uncle’s death.
“They were closing us in,” she told police in her DVD interview which was played to a jury in the High Court at Hamilton today.
“They were all coming up on the grass, coming around, and I was just so scared.
“They were all walking up really quickly ... barking and stuff.
“It was all kind of childish, to be honest.”
It was just minutes before her uncle Mitchell Te Kani was allegedly struck by one of the gang members to the side of the head.
He fell to the ground and died at the scene.
Ten Mongrel Mob members are defending murder charges, along with other violence or perverting justice charges.
They are Kevin Allan Bailey and Shem Williams, both from Gate Pā; Mihaka Ratahi, of Pāpāmoa; Kiri Mereina Pini and Bodine Umuroa, from Parkvale; Hamiora Bennett, from Brookfield; Huntly man Jahvaun Te Ari Layne; Jamie Robin Thomas, of Rotorua, and Witaiawa Robinson and Samuel Mark Milosi, of Tauranga.
Her frustrations with the slow police response could be heard as her 111 calls were also played to the jury, the last of which would record the moment she discovered her uncle, Te Kani, unconscious on the driveway.
In her police interview, she said her father, Thomas Te Kani, and her uncle were up against the garage door, but the group went for Thomas first.
“They jumped on him ... then my dad got dragged down [driveway] by [Umuroa] and started kicking him in the stomach.”
She said his hair was also being pulled, as he had dreadlocks, and someone threw a wheelbarrow at her uncle’s car.
Her first 111 call was made at 10.40pm before the second was placed at 11.04pm. That second call was also played to the jury, revealing the whānau questioning where police were.
“The first call was about half an hour ago,” the now 17-year-old said in the call.
“There’s so many of them. It’s an emergency.”
She then said her grandfather was “on the floor”, before realising it was her uncle, Te Kani.
“He’s unconscious ... hurry up please.”
Thomas then got on the phone and told the call taker it was “an emergency”.
“This is a home invasion ... from the Mongrel Mob”, adding that Te Kani was “bleeding profusely from the head”.
“He’s been struck with an axe ... he’s breathing but he’s unconscious.”
There were key events leading up to the alleged murder.
The first was about two weeks prior when Pini went to the Te Kani property and she and Thomas Te Kani- her former partner - had an argument that resulted in him smashing some windows of her car.
“She told him she was going to make him pay for that,” Crown solicitor Duncan McWilliam told the jury in his opening address on Tuesday.
Umuroa and Pini later turned up at the property around 10.20pm, with Umuroa armed with a small wrench. The pair demanded to see Thomas but he wasn’t home.
In a cellphone video, Umuroa is allegedly heard saying “Tell the homie he owes”, “I’m gonna waste the c***”, and “I will come back tomorrow with carloads of Mongrel Mob ... unless you f***ing sort it out”.
Thomas turned up as they were leaving and a fight ensued, during which Thomas is said to have gotten the better of Umuroa and taken a wrench off him.
Pini allegedly told Thomas, “You’re f***ed now, they are coming”.
Five carloads of Mongrel Mob members allegedly turned up about 15 minutes later armed with bottles, an iron bar, a hatchet, and a crowbar and there was an alleged brawl that resulted in both the gang members and the Te Kani whānau being injured and Mitchell Te Kani dying.
Umuroa’s counsel Tony Rickard-Simms got the teen to confirm that she didn’t see a lot of the first incident and had instead been told by other people.
However, she said she saw “some things” herself.
He also put to her that it was dark that night and the only lights were from their house, but she replied that all the lights were on and the curtains were open “so I could see him”.
Scott Mills, on behalf of Pini, put to her that his client had been visiting the property for about a year and in more recent times nearly every weekend especially since she’d become a grandmother.
“At that stage, things were pretty good?” he asked the teen.
“So I thought,” she replied.
Their family circumstances were complicated at the time, and Thomas had wanted them all to be a stable family unit, but it was something Pini didn’t want to talk about.
She instead wanted to get her stuff out of the house and avoided going to the home.
“She was worried about going in [the home],” Mills put to her.
“Yeah,” she replied, “Scared?”, Mills responded.
“I wouldn’t say scared. She was worried.”
He also confirmed that Pini had a protection order against Thomas.
Max Simpkins, on behalf of Kevin Bailey, told the teen that someone would give evidence that Te Kani had a crowbar, Thomas had an axe, and Whetu Hika had the family dog.
The teen said she only recalled seeing the dog and didn’t know how one of the Mongrel Mob members ended up being hit with a blunt instrument across the head.
“What did [Mitchell Te Kani] do with the crowbar,” he asked her.
“I’m not sure,” the teen replied.
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.
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