1.00pm
The police officer who headed the inquiry into the death of a teenager at a Whangarei party is "extremely disappointed" at the manslaughter verdict for the woman charged with her murder.
Detective Sergeant Rob Huys said police were now working to achieve "a good custodial sentence".
Julie Johnson, 20, had been charged with murdering 16-year-old Renee Brown after ploughing her car into a group of people at a party in the Whangarei suburb of Kamo in February last year.
A High Court jury in Whangarei last night found her not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter after deliberating for more than 10 hours.
Johnson denied murdering Miss Brown and also pleaded not guilty to four charges of causing grievous bodily harm with intent t o Nitama Brown, Hayden Gorrie, Ricki Johnson and Jeff Masters.
She also denied 11 charges of injuring with intent to cause GBH to 10 others.
The jury found her not guilty on all these charges.
Mr Huys said the law was complex and hard to explain to the victims and their families.
"We had a lot of people hurt. We had one girl killed. We were happy that the facts of the case were presented to the court. Although we can't make the decisions ourselves we are extremely disappointed," he said.
He had not been paying much attention to Johnson's family when the verdict was read out.
"I was looking after my victims, the deceased's family," Mr Huys told National Radio.
More than 400 people had been at the party.
"You've got the deceased's family, you've got the injured persons and you've got the other 400 or so who witnessed what happened, who will never forget what they saw."
"It's extremely tragic. It won't go away and it's not over really. We're just focusing on the sentencing phase and hoping we can do the best to get a good custodial sentence which I think this person deserves," he said.
Justice Nicholson remanded Johnson in custody, to be sentenced in the High Court in Whangarei on June 9.
Karen Erceg, whose daughter Amy had been at the party, told National Radio a clear expression of remorse from Johnson would probably help bring some sense of closure.
"But it's going to take Renee's family a long time to get that closure.
"They were waiting for the trial to be over so they could do the unveiling for their daughter to get closure."
She had been at the court until about 11.30pm yesterday with the Brown family.
They were "really good, but no one's going to bring their daughter back. Nothing will ever change for them. They've got a life sentence".
Johnson had done something "really, really wrong".
"We talked to the unts of grievous bodily harm, it's sort of just voided all that.
"So all these kids with their injuries, you can't see a lot of it today. They've had operation after operation, so you can't see it physically today but they've been through a lot in the last 15 months," Mrs Erceg said.
Her daughter and some others who had been at the party did not accept the jury's apparent finding that Johnson had not acted intentionally.
"They didn't accept the non-intention. They watched it, they witnessed it," she said.
"My daughter's turning around now and saying 'I'm going to make what I do count now because Renee didn't get that chance'.
"She (Renee) was a bright girl, a caring girl and she didn't get the opportunity to live her life to the fullest, so the other kids have to turn around and do it for her."
- NZPA
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