KEY POINTS:
A 12-hour drinking session came before an attack on a 14-year-old boy in Christchurch's Linwood Park by a group of older teens, according to one of those charged with kicking the boy unconscious.
Jamie Junior Karlytzky gave two interviews to the police, denying his involvement in the first
session, but admitting that he had kicked the boy "in the head and the guts" for about five minutes in the second interview.
Both tapes were played to the jury on the second day of a trial in Christchurch District Court before Judge Colin Doherty today.
Karlytzky says on the tape that he "just lost it" when he learned that the boy who had been approached by his group - three of them are charged with robbing the boy - had stabbed two of his friends.
Harley Ehekrera Tapine, 17, Karlytzky, 18, and Te Kewana Hoori Kapea, 18, are charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
Chelsea Lissina Whaanga, 18, Kapea, and Tapine, face robbery charges. Tapine faces a further assault charge. These three are listed as unemployed, and Karlytzky was employed as a vegetable packer.
The attack took place about 3am on Saturday April 12, as the boy was crossing Linwood Park with a group of his friends.
Karlytzky told the court he and some friends had begun drinking on the Friday afternoon and it went on for "hours and hours". They went into the city and then returned to Eastgate Mall by bus, where they bought more beer. They then went to the park and kept on drinking until the early hours of Saturday.
When Tapine and Whaanga were stabbed, he was really angry and "just lost it". He found out later the pair did not need to go to hospital for any stitches.
Karlytzky said in the interview he had kicked the boy to the ground, and then continued the kicking even though he wasn't scared of him. "Every time I looked at (Whaanga) it would make me angry and I would kick him again."
He thought the attack went on for about five minutes. Asked why he had not simply knocked the boy down, taken the knife off him, and called the police, he said: "We were drunk. We didn't think straight."
The interviewing officer asked: "Did you think you did too much kicking in the head?"
Karlytzky replied, "Yeah."
Karlytzky said he saw the boy was on the ground covered with blood at the end of the kicking, and he asked one of the girls to call an ambulance.
The boy spent three days in hospital with head and facial injuries after the attack.
In a separate police interview, Tapine told of the drinking session beginning a day earlier, on the Thursday.
- NZPA
