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A child has recounted his mother’s fatal fall from a car during his father’s manslaughter trial.
Prosecutors allege the mother fled the vehicle out of fear during a violent argument.
Jurors watched a video interview from when the boy was 10. Now 12, he says he remembers things differently.
A 10-year-old boy who witnessed his mother’s fatal plunge from the family car amid a violent exchange with his father briefly wept as he sat in a police station interview room the next morning, recounting his mother’s laboured breathing as she lay in a South Aucklandroad.
His father also briefly covered his eyes in tissues today as the October 2023 interview was played for jurors in the High Court at Auckland on the second day of his manslaughter trial.
The defendant, 29, and the woman who died both have name suppression to protect the identity of the underage witness.
Speaking in fast, staccato pace, the boy recounted how he had been running errands with his parents that night in Māngere when the adults got into an argument outside a Chinese takeaway. When the boy returned to the parked car after retrieving the food, his mother had left the vehicle and his father had run after her, he told police.
“Then he just started swearing at her and telling her to give him the keys and she chucked them,” the boy recalled, referring to a set of keys for a Harley-Davidson motorcycle the father had recently purchased. “So then yeah, that led to my mum yelling at my dad and my dad like just kept yelling at my mum and like hitting her and trying to get her back in the car.”
The argument continued as they drove away from the restaurant and his father’s driving was erratic enough that an order of fried rice fell from the boy’s lap, he said.
“Oh, give it here,” he recalled his mum saying of what was left of the spilled entree.
“Then she chucked it on my dad,” he said. “...When she chucked the fried rice at him he started punching her. Like, I kept telling him to stop because, like, he was driving and we kept swerving...”
A man is on trial for "fright response" manslaughter in the High Court at Auckland after his partner fell to her death from a moving car along McKenzie Rd in Māngere. Photo / Google
The boy exhaled loudly to demonstrate how angry his father was when the rice was thrown at him.
“Like, he started getting very, very mad .... cos some of it was very hot fried rice and it went all over him and he was wearing a singlet and shorts,” he recalled.
“Dad stop, just keep your eyes on the road!” he recalled saying.
The boy said he was momentarily blinded when his father threw rice into the back seat and it got in his eyes.
“When I opened my eyes after he chucked the thing at my eyes I see that we’re on McKenzie Rd and I seen him punch my mum, I think, like on the head somewhere and then she jumped out of the car.”
Prosecutors have alleged the defendant is guilty of “fright response” manslaughter, which occurs when a victim acts in a manner dangerous to his or her life out of fear of another person. The woman fled the moving vehicle, it has been alleged, because she feared a severe beating at the hands of her spouse.
In the interview, the boy said both parents were hitting each other. He said his mother was crying and her eyes were red before she exited the vehicle.
“Sometimes when you get fights in the car she always like opens the door and says like she’s gonna jump out,” he told the interviewer, explaining that his mother had tried to exit the car earlier in the argument but his father was driving too fast.
He estimated his father was driving 80 or 90km/h at one point but the car was probably travelling between 40 and 60km/h when his mother exited.
The boy described an at-times tumultuous relationship between his parents in which there was “a lot of physical stuff” when they would argue.
“Mum would chuck stuff, my dad would like hit my mum and push her on the floor,” he said.
But that night was different, he told police.
“I never, ever seen him fight like that before,” the boy said of his father. “I seen my dad, like, push her before, like kick her, but never ever seen him punch in the face or like punch her anywhere on the body, like around the face, like the head.”
A police interviewer asked the child repeatedly about the timing between when the last punch was thrown and when his mother exited the vehicle. He reckoned it was between three and 10 seconds.
“When she jumped out my dad started yelling and ... calling my mum,” the boy recalled, explaining that his father stopped the vehicle within seconds and ran after her. “I jumped out and then I could see my mum and I kept saying, ‘No, no, no, no.’”
The High Court at Auckland. Photo / NZME
He didn’t recognise her, he said, because of all the blood.
“...He [the defendant] started wrapping his jumper around my mum and you could hear her breathing loudly, like she couldn’t breathe properly.”
The child, now 12 years old, appeared via audio-video feed from another room of the courthouse as the video was played for jurors. His recollections of his father softened somewhat when he was questioned by defence lawyer Andrew Speed after the video concluded.
He clarified that his father had pushed his mother into the car outside the takeaway but had not punched her at that point, as had been suggested in the video. He acknowledged sitting directly behind his mother in the back seat, obstructing his view of what followed.
The child said he didn’t know if his mother pulled at his father’s hair or yanked at the steering wheel after the food was thrown, as had been suggested by the defence. The two were just arguing at that point, with no punches yet thrown, he said.
He said his mother at one point said she was going to jump out of the car and his father slowed down, locking the door and telling her: “Don’t be an idiot.”
“Did you see your mother hitting your father, punching him?” Speed asked.
The boy said he did, and he saw his father pushing her away rather than punching.
Speed suggested that his client was at that point driving to the nearby cemetery where the boy’s grandmother had been recently buried because it was a refuge of peace and reflection when things got heated.
“Did you see your mother attack your father again?” the lawyer asked.
The boy replied: “Yes – she was punching him.”
“She’s a pretty strong woman, your mother?” Speed continued.
Speed added: “He was trying to drive ... and he was yelling at her to stop?”
The boy answered in the affirmative.
The witness agreed with his father’s lawyer that he had no real idea how much time had elapsed between the violence between his parents and when his mother exited the vehicle.
When speaking to police he had been up late the night before at the hospital and was woken up when officers arrived at his door, he said. He agreed with the defence lawyer that he was tired and hungry when giving the interview. His statements in court would be more accurate, he agreed, now that he’d had time to reflect on it.
As the cross-examination finished, the defendant yelled out in a proud voice from the dock: “Love you, my boy!”
He then turned sheepish as he addressed Justice Michael Robinson.
“Sorry,” he said. “I just haven’t seen him for a while.”
The trial resumes tomorrow.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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