The scene of the Stokes Valley shooting. Photo / NZ Herald
The scene of the Stokes Valley shooting. Photo / NZ Herald
A woman charged with killing one man and wounding his brother at a 50th birthday party has described dumping the gun and her partner’s gang patch in the backyard at her best friend’s house.
The woman and her partner, whose names are both suppressed, are on trial in thetarget="_self"> High Court at Wellington, where they deny charges of murder and attempted murder. The woman also denied an additional charge of assault with a weapon.
Rawiri Wharerau was fatally shot, and his brother Hemi seriously wounded, during birthday celebrations for their cousin, Robert Huaki snr. The festivities were held at the brothers’ house in Stokes Valley in December 2023.
Today in court, the woman gave her account of events that night.
She explained she’d been at her own work drinks that night and had not expected to go to the birthday party. But on returning home and finding her partner was still out, she had gone over to pick him up.
She said the mood at the party was initially fine, but about half an hour after arriving, she had heard Huaki snr call her partner, a patched member of Mangu Kaha, “the son of a narking dog s***” — a derogatory term for the Mongrel Mob.
The couple both have family members in the Mongrel Mob.
Others sitting around the table had stood up and thinking it was time to go, she had started walking back to the car. Her partner argued for a bit before following her to the car. For some reason, Rawiri Wharerau jumped into the backseat beside her partner.
“I still don’t know why he got into the car, to this day,” she said.
After they’d driven the short distance home, the pair went into the house, where her partner retrieved a gun. Rawiri Wharerau stayed in the car.
She told the court she’d never seen the gun before and was angry.
“I thought ‘what the f*** is that doing in my house?‘” and she told the court she would never have allowed it because her young son could have found it.
They drove back to the party to drop Rawiri Wharerau off, and during the trip there was no mention of the gun, and Rawiri Wharerau did not seem worried about it.
Arriving back at the party they found everyone was out on the street and their car was surrounded.
“It was like they were waiting for us,” she said.
‘He grabbed me from behind’
She said her partner got out and was immediately attacked by three people. She added her recollection of events was hazy, and she could not recall how she came to be holding the gun but said she had never held a gun in her life.
She said she had hit Hemi Wharerau over the head with it after she’d felt him approaching her from behind, but she didn’t know who it was.
“He grabbed me from behind. I turned around, and I hit him in the head to get him away from me,” she said.
She said she’d hit him on the ground with her hands because she didn’t want him to get up and attack her.
Eventually, everyone backed away, and the couple got into the car and left.
When they got home, she said she’d gotten into bed, while her partner remained in the kitchen. She could hear him on the phone to Hemi Wharerau, asking them to come back and sort it out.
But she said Hemi Wharerau did not sound angry. In fact, they were laughing during the call.
She told the court she thought the point of the trip was to go back to the party and sort it out, collect $2000 that had fallen out of her partner’s bum bag and return the gun before coming home to sleep.
She said they parked the car on the street and her partner had gone up the driveway, while she had stood and talked to a carload of people parked at the bottom of the driveway. She’d asked if they’d seen her partner’s money, but they said they hadn’t.
Driveway leading up to the Whareraus' house in Stokes Valley. Photo / Supplied.
Then she heard a a gunshot, from up the drive. Shocked, she ran up the driveway. At the top, standing near the house, she found her partner who was yelling at partygoers, and they were yelling back. She said she did not understand what had happened.
The next thing, one of the women confronted her, she said. She punched the woman in the face, at which point the woman had picked up a bottle, broken it and began advancing on her while holding it. She could see her partner arguing with Hemi Wharerau.
She’d heard a bang and seen Hemi Wharerau crouching on the ground, his arms in front of him, before hearing another bang. She had kept walking backwards down the driveway, with the woman still threatening her.
“I was walking faster and faster. I was walking down the driveway at a fast pace,” she said.
She got to the bottom first, and her partner followed her to the car.
Driving home, there had been little conversation between them, although she said she didn’t know anyone had been shot.
When they got home, her partner asked her to get rid of the gun and his patch. She had taken both to her best friend’s house, leaving the gun in long grass behind a shed at the back of her property and the patch inside the shed.
Her friend, who had no gang connections, was asleep at the time. The woman said that was the last time she’d seen the items.
Returning home, the woman said she just wanted to go to bed. She didn’t think anyone had been hurt or that the gun was loaded.
The next thing, her partner woke her up, telling her someone had died, and she was stunned and in shock.
“Then he said it was Tubs [Rawiri’s nickname], you could tell from his face he was upset,” she said.
She said he told her they had to leave because the gang would come to the house. She wrapped herself in a blanket, and they left in the car together.
As they drove north, she described the trip as the quietest in her life, no talking or radio, “we could hear each other breathing”.
“He just kept saying sorry, this wasn’t supposed to happen, it was an accident, he wasn’t meant to do this,” she said.
The following day, she had returned to Wellington to collect her son, who’d stayed with family.
Crown: You weren’t welcome there
Crown prosecutor Stephanie Bishop played the woman phone footage taken by a neighbour of the fight on the street.
Bishop challenged the woman’s account that others were being violent towards them, saying it only showed the couple being aggressive and not the other way around, suggesting they were angry.
The jury trial before Justice Dale La Hood is expected to finish this week.
Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently, she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice.
