Christopher King
Former ambulance officer Christopher Roger King agreed he must be "the most unlucky ambulance officer in the country" as he took to the witness stand at Napier District Court yesterday.
King, 48, has vehemently denied the eight sex charges he faces relating to four female complainants, aged 15 to 57, between 2010 and 2013.
When he took the stand, King was asked by his lawyer, Bill Calver, if there was any truth to the allegations against him. He replied "definitely not".
As Crown prosecutor Steve Manning began his cross-examination of King he said: "You must be the most unlucky ambulance officer in the country?"
"I could well be," King said.
"And you get falsely accused [of sexual crimes] by not one but four women," Mr Manning retorted.
"That's strikingly bad luck for you isn't it - And there's no suggestion they got their heads together to set you up."
"Are you feeling pretty confident, Mr King," Mr Manning asked. "Is that confidence how you dealt with these women?"
King said he was simply trying to answer Mr Manning's questions.
There was some debate between Mr Manning and King about the use and placement of the ambulance officer's cellphone on July 24, 2013 when he attended to the 15-year-old complainant, with King suggesting his phone may have started recording without his knowledge.
The Crown alleges King twice recorded intimate videos of the teen while she was affected by the pain relief drug Entonox.
Mr Manning said it would be an "extraordinary" coincidence for the teenage complainant to allege King recorded intimate videos of her and then "lo and behold" police investigations found digital footprints showing videos had been created on King's phone during the ambulance journey.
"Are you seriously suggesting to this jury that while you are attending to a sleeping [teenage patient] somehow the cell phone starts randomly videoing without your knowledge?" Mr Manning said.
"You couldn't help yourself. You had a sleeping, young, 15-year-old girl in the back of the ambulance. You got your phone out and started videoing her.
"What part of her did you film? Breast? Genitals?"
Mr Manning suggested upon arriving with his patient at the Waipukurau Medical Centre the trip went awry.
"This day, right at this moment was starting to go very badly for you wasn't it?" Mr Manning said, as the court was again shown CCTV footage of the teen fleeing from King's ambulance. Mr Manning added King had "to get rid of the evidence".
King said he had no "conscious" or "clear" memory of deleting the videos but did recall in his evidence seeing a "black screen", and later conceded he "must have" deleted the videos.
He said it was an "automatic reaction" to "just delete" what videos are there if they were "not relevant".
"Are you serious?" Mr Manning frequently asked King. "Are you making this up as you go along?"
Judge Geoff Rea questioned why King would "see the need to delete two blank videos" in an obviously stressful situation.
Mr Manning said King's contact, via text and phone, after the alleged assault with the "vulnerable" 57-year-old and second complainant was "clearly inappropriate for an ambulance officer".
"You saw a weakness didn't you? You thought you'd try it on didn't you?
"You rang [the patient] Mr King, because you thought you got lucky," Mr Manning said. "You had used your ambulance to try and pick up a woman."
King replied: "I blame myself - Both of us were as guilty as each other, we were both married. We both text each other and spoke to each other on the phone - Believe you me it was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, [to] tell my wife.
"I'm not interested in the moral issue, Mr King. I'm interested in the ethical issue," Mr Manning said.
King said it was "stupid" to form a text relationship with the 57-year-old but he was "flattered that someone would take an interest in me".
Mr Manning concluded his cross-examination by stating: "You got bolder and bolder as you went along - until you met your match in the form of a 15-year-old with a stroppy attitude who burst out of your ambulance screaming 'keep him away from me'."
The trial continues today.