As he attempted to "shoo" a group of Mongrel Mob members back as they advanced towards Black Power rivals Detective Steven Burborough heard a pop.
"It might sound a bit weird but at first I didn't realise it was a gunshot. Yeah, there was material hitting the road, then the penny dropped it was shotgun shots. It was all a little bit in slow motion," he told a Rotorua High Court jury of five men and seven women.
The five men and seven women are trying Whakatane Black Power gang members Benjamin Biddle, Stallone Harawira, Whitu Taipeti, Codie Taitapanui, Te Reneti Tarau and Taumata Tawhai charged in the wake of an armed riot between Black Power and Mongrel Mob members at Whakatane on January 17 last year.
Burborough outlined this afternoon how he and his Rotorua colleagues moved to the front of a Mongrel Mob group advancing down Arawa Rd towards a posse of Black Power members or affiliates as tensions between the rivals escalated. "We were telling them 'come on fellas, go back to your funeral'."
Referring to the general melee that greeted him on arriving in Whakatane the Rotorua detective said he had seen a lot of people posturing, "puffing themselves up" and yelling aggressively.
He told of seeing a Black Power member with a shotgun, then another with a rifle.
"Obviously that was a lot more dangerous. I yelled out 'one of them's got a rifle'. Everyone was getting off the road, I looked back and he was pointing it in the air."
The group got into a car, made a U-turn, and sped off.