Operation Totara: Mitchell Te Kani’s niece recalls hugging him as he dies in driveway

The 10 accused on trial charged with the murder of Tauranga man Mitchell Te Kani on May 14, 2022. Photo / NZME/Mike Scott

When Mahura Te Kani saw her uncle lying injured and unconscious on the ground she dropped to her knees and held him as she cried.

Soon after the new mum watched as her shocked grandfather, “Papa” Korau Te Kani, struggled to comprehend what police were telling him – that his son Mitchell Te Kani was dead following a brawl on their Tauranga property in May 2022.

“What are you talking about? He’s not dead, he’s not gone”, she recalled him saying to the police.

“That just broke me. I just held onto him and cried with him.”

Ten people are on trial defending multiple charges, including murder, in the High Court at Hamilton after five carloads of Mongrel Mob members and associates turned up armed with bottles, an iron bar, a hatchet, and a crowbar.

A brawl erupted during which Te Kani was allegedly killed after being struck in the head with a crowbar and falling backwards onto concrete. Several other people were also injured.

At the start of the second week of the trial, Mahura this morning gave evidence recalling the night her mother Kiri Pini, and her mother’s partner Bodine Umuroa, turned up uninvited to the Te Kani whānau property looking for her father, Thomas Te Kani.

The then-19 year old, who had an 8-week-old baby inside the house, called out and asked what her mother what was doing there.

“They just kept walking closer and as they kept moving closer I was telling them to leave... and ‘why would you bring him here?’

“They just kept coming right up.”

Her mother asked where her father was and told her to go and get him but she said she repeatedly told them he wasn’t home and to leave.

“I said get off my property, get off my whenua, and go.

“They kept pressing it I was getting pretty scared... I told them to ‘f*** off.”

Umuroa was initially quiet, but as soon as she told them to ‘f**k off’, she said he bit back.

“He said ‘Where is he I’m gonna f****** waste him’... and ‘where the f*** is he’.”

After telling them to leave again, she said Umuroa replied “I’m f****** Mongrel Mob”, and was adamant they weren’t leaving.

By now Pini and Umuroa had walked up the driveway and were on the second, and final, set of stairs leading up to the house.

A heated exchange continued between the group before Mitchell, Thomas’ brother, came up the stairs and tried to get them to leave.

“When they were talking to me I could smell the stench of alcohol ... Uncle Mitch was trying to calm them down,” she said.

Then her “Papa” appeared and she said Umuroa said to him, “Who the f*** are you?”, before pushing him in the chest.

When she yelled out to her mother saying “f*** off, just leave, you’re toxic, Mum, like your psycho family”, Pini walked up the stairs and grabbed her by the collar of her jersey, and “rag-dolled” her by pulling her down on to the stairs.

When Umuroa allegedly assaulted her papa, she told him “That was assault, you assaulted a kaumātua”, and he replied, “I don’t give a f***. I’m mighty Mongrel Mob. I don’t give a f***”.

The pair eventually left, but bumped into Thomas and another one of her uncles Whetu Hika, in the driveway and a fight erupted.

She said she ran down and saw her father standing over Umuroa, who was on the ground getting beaten up.

“I was right there, I was right next to it,” she told the court. “My dad was over him, punching him, and my mum was grabbing on my dad’s hair to try and rip him off.”

Thomas then asked her to pull Pini off him but when she did the pair fell onto the grass, and her partner’s mother got Pini off her.

Police outside the Maungatapu Rd, Tauranga, property of the Te Kani whanau on Sunday, May 15, 2022, after Mitchell Te Kani was allegedly murdered.

As Pini and Umeroa were leaving, Pini said “You’re f***** now” as Thomas walked Umeroa down the driveway to their car.

Mahura and her whānau made their way back up the driveway and had a hug.

‘I was holding him crying’

Shortly afterwards she noticed multiple cars pulling into the school across the road. She said it was groups of Mongrel Mob marching up the driveway, yelling their gang slogan, with their hands in the air and barking.

“It was just a sea of red... as soon as one threw a bottle, others started throwing bottles.”

She called 111 at 10.58pm and stayed on the line throughout the attack, until discovering her uncle Mitchell was on the ground, unconscious.

“Whose that, is that Uncle Mitch?” she can be heard saying on the 111 call played to the jury.

“He needs pressure on his head,” she says, as another whānau member says that the cops had arrived but were waiting at the bottom of the driveway for backup throughout the attack.

The call ended at 11.11pm.

Asked how close she got to her 51-year-old uncle, Mahura said she knelt down and hugged him, then went and got a towel to use as pressure for his wound.

“As soon as I [saw] him I put myself down by him and was holding him and crying, just seeing him like this.”

Police arrived, and soon after told the whānau that Mitchell had died.

She couldn’t recall seeing Umuroa during the second fight, but “very, very briefly” spotted her mother.

Max Simpkins, representing defendant Kevin Bailey, said one of the gang members was seriously injured and needed surgery and asked Mahura who did that, but she said she didn’t know.

She was also unclear as to what Mitchell did with the crowbar that was allegedly used to strike him on the head.

He said to her that she only seemed to remember assaults that happened on her whānau but not on any of the gang members.

“That’s because there were so many crowded around one person, so I couldn’t see my family getting attacked. I could only see three or four people on one of my family members.”

Members of the gang and the Te Kani whānau were injured during the brawl.

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.