Neighbour gives evidence in High Court Walker and Grace murder trial

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

"I shot the wrong person! I shot the wrong person!”

That’s what a neighbour of murder-accused George Hallet Walker says she heard him saying when he and his partner Mercedies Grace arrived home in Walker’s distinctive grey ute moments after a woman had been shot in nearby Titoki Street at about 9.55pm on March 25  last year.

Walker’s next door neighbour on Childers Road, a few doors down from the Lytton Road roundabout, said she had heard two shots.

She found out later that 36-year-old Maraea Smith (also known as Maraea Turnbull) — with whom she had family connections and who she had known as a child — had been hit by one of those bullets while outside a house and had died where she fell.

Walker’s neighbour said she “had an idea something bad was going to go down” when she saw him leaving the house a short time earlier with what looked like a gun wrapped in a blanket.

These recollections were part of the 39-year-old woman’s evidence given via AV-link on day three of a High Court murder trial for Walker and Grace, which started in Gisborne on Monday.

Walker — a Mongrel Mob member — is alleged to have been the gunman who shot Ms Smith; Grace, who is an affiliate of the gang, is charged as a party by assisting Walker, including driving him and to and from the scene.

Their neighbour said she was woken that night by her worried child and noises out on the street.

Walker, who she had known for years as “Smoky”, was zooming back and forth in his ute from outside his property towards the Lytton Road roundabout while yelling "Sieg f***ing Heil".

She heard him do it three times before he parked kerbside facing the wrong way outside his property and went to his and Grace’s cabin.

The witness said she knew what the phrase Walker was yelling meant. Before his death, her father was a Mongrel Mob member and had told her it was a callout for a hit on rival Black Power members — a gang she had once supported.

Walker seemed “frustrated and in a rush”, the witness said.

“He wasn’t very happy.”

Then there was noise coming from the cabin.  It sounded like someone rummaging through tools and dropping them on the ground, the woman said.

Her house was close to the cabin. She could clearly see another man with Walker — someone she didn’t know.

Walker then ran from the house. He was slightly crouched over, holding an object that looked like a firearm. It was draped in a blanket. He put it on the back seat of his ute.

“What is this egg up to?” she recalled thinking.

Grace casually walked out after him and said, “Heil, I’m coming, wait for me”, before getting in the driver’s seat.

The witness said she knew Grace, whose nickname is Sadie, as a neighbour and knew her family through church. This was the first time she had seen her that night.

“I had an idea something bad was going to go down. I just kept my kids in the lounge, heard the crash, two shots fired and the truck screaming back to its address,” the woman said.

As they pulled into their driveway and got out in the backyard she clearly heard Walker twice say, “I shot the wrong person.”

He sounded emotional and upset, the woman said. She heard Grace snap back at him, “Shut the f*** up, who the f*** cares? How do you know they’re gonna come around here?”

‘I was worried about my own people’

Then things went quiet.

She was worried about her sister who lived just off Titoki Street so she drove to check on her, the witness said.

Before going home, she said, she “done a few laps, rung the ambulance…they took a mighty long time”.

Under cross-examination by Walker’s counsel Shane Cassidy, the woman said she knew “Smoky” as well as she did Maraea, who was her husband’s niece.

There had never been any trouble between her, Walker and Grace as neighbours.

She insisted she had heard correctly things she alleged Walker said that night. She rejected Mr Cassidy’s suggestion Walker had not been yelling “pu dog” but had been calling out to someone at his property, “Ford dog”.

His comment about “shooting the wrong person” was not misheard as something different said in a three-way video conversation between Walker and two other men trying to find out from each other what had happened in Titoki Street.

Asked if knowledge of Maraea being shot and killed with a rifle had some effect on her recollection of events when she spoke to police two days later, the witness was emphatic it hadn’t.

She had told police she couldn’t be sure Walker had a firearm but that it looked like one, especially given the way he had carried it.

She rejected counsel’s suggestion the object might have been an axe handle.

She hadn’t seen the unknown person arrive at the property. She didn’t see him get out of the car with Walker. She was unable to say if a photograph Mr Cassidy showed her of an upcoming defence witness was that same person.

Mr Simperingham put it to her that having admittedly gone to Titoki Street to “do some laps” and “have a nosey” as much as to check on her sister, she hadn’t phoned police that night to tell them what she now alleged.

The witness said she had called 111 and asked for the ambulance service.

“When you’re in a situation like that you just focus on getting emergency out to the scene”.

People were concerned about how long it was taking for police and ambulance to arrive.

“This lady’s possibly dead by now. It was 20 minutes before they got there.”

She was worried about family in the street, including a nan.

“The police were standing with AK47s, I couldn’t even go and get nana out of the house. That’s how shit scared she was.

“So yes, being nosey but also being mindful for the people that are innocent and what’s going on.

“I was just worried about my own people at that time, also the children — all the babies down that street.”

Mr Simperingham still questioned her delay in going to police. He put it to her that she’d made the whole thing up. The woman replied, “that’s incorrect”.

Re-examined by prosecutor Clayton Walker, she said she couldn’t be sure if she told police the day after the shooting or two days later — a Sunday — but that her “spiritual side kicked in”.

“I don’t know if you understand the Lord Jesus Christ or anything but when I was walking with him I got the indication to come in here and tell my story”.

In other cross-examination by Mr Simperingham, the woman spoke about having falsely identified to police ahead of the trial a male she had seen walking through the Elgin shopping area after the shooting with what looked like a tool concealed in his sleeve. It was a mistake and she had acknowledged it wasn’t the person she thought, the woman said.

Justice Peter Churchman is presiding.