An Auckland teen’s decision to fire a shotgun into an unfamiliar vehicle after he was attacked at a New Year’s Eve party has resulted in a “catastrophic case of mistaken identity”, jurors were told today as his murder trial began.
It’s not disputed that defendant Chaelim John McCarthy, now 20, fired at a green Lexus about 3.14am on New Year’s Day 2024 – resulting in the 17-year-old driver losing an eye and passenger Jaymis Faletolu suffering a fatal head wound.
But his intent behind the shooting is in dispute, jurors in the High Court at Auckland were told.
Prosecutors say the defendant intended to fire inside the vehicle, knowing it could kill the occupants. That makes him guilty of murder even though it turned out he had accidentally targeted members of his own friend group, jurors were told.
But defence lawyer Ron Mansfield, KC, described the Crown’s interpretation of what occurred that morning as overly “sinister”.
His client was bleeding, his teeth were knocked out and he was in shock from having been beaten without provocation, he said, explaining the teen was also highly intoxicated after imbibing for the first time after nearly a year of abstinence. In “a very stupid and foolish act”, McCarthy intended to scare off his attackers by shooting at the engine of their car, he said.
But McCarthy had no intention of shooting any person, Mansfield said, explaining to jurors his client wanted to plead guilty to manslaughter but couldn’t because the Crown was set on pursuing a murder conviction.
He noted the driver’s side window was down only 9cm, leaving a small gap for the shotgun pellets to have travelled through. That leaves one of two scenarios, he said.
“Either Mr McCarthy was exceptionally lucky because he intended to kill both these individuals,” Mansfield said of the small gap. “Or he was exceptionally unlucky.”
But Crown prosecutor Chris Howard used some of the defendant’s own words to suggest there had been intent.
“Just killed three [racial slur],” he texted about four hours after the shooting.
“I’d do it again, uso. They chose the gangster life. They wanna be gangster. We showed them that life.”
McCarthy and a friend arrived at the party, in the garage of a Manurewa home, around 11pm on New Year’s Eve. The friend is also on trial, having pleaded not guilty to lesser charges of possession of a firearm and being an accessory to murder after the fact.
Their friend group had been “feuding” with another group of young men, Howard told jurors, explaining that “all hell broke loose” when the other group arrived around 3.12am and started throwing punches at guests.
Two minutes later, after the attackers started to flee, McCarthy retrieved the shotgun from his car. He walked into the road where the Lexus was in the middle of a U-turn manoeuvre and fired once.
The Lexus crashed into a van, which is where emergency responders found the two victims seriously injured a short time later.
Before that evening, McCarthy had discussed the ongoing dispute with the other group, texting his co-defendant at one point: “It’s war.”
He had also previously discussed introducing a gun into the conflict, prosecutors said.
“Yo, might bring a strap because everyone’s strapped these days,” he texted on one occasion. “But probably as a scare tactic. I’m not dumb enough to use it. I’ll probably aim for the legs.”
Earlier on New Year’s Eve he had posed for a photo with the gun, wearing a balaclava and making hand signals, Howard told jurors.
McCarthy stayed at the scene for about three minutes after the shooting before his co-defendant drove him away to a home in West Auckland where he could lay low, prosecutors said.
Faletolu died the next day.
McCarthy was not arrested until two weeks later, when police executed a search warrant and found pieces of the broken-down gun in his car.
In a subsequent interview with police, McCarthy admitted firing the gun at the car but insisted it wasn’t aimed at the occupants.
“He accepts responsibility but at no stage ... does he accept that he did so with murderous intent,” Mansfield said.
The defence lawyer acknowledged his client would sometimes pose for photos with friends trying to look like gangsters or American rappers. But that was for a laugh, he said, noting that McCarthy had a fulltime job and spent all his free time training with his friends at an area boxing club.
“This is not some hood rat who wants to be in an actual gang, driving around with a firearm looking for trouble,” Mansfield said, suggesting that McCarthy had the gun only for protection because he lived in South Auckland and had been attacked by armed assailants previously.
“There was no expectation of trouble,” he said of the party.
Defence lawyer Esther Kim, who represents the co-defendant, placed a similar emphasis on her opening statement, describing her client as having been “panicked and confused” after he was “blindsided and assaulted by complete strangers”.
While he did drive McCarthy from the scene with McCarthy’s gun in the back seat, he never touched the firearm and had no interest in helping his friend evade police, Kim said, describing her client as an 18-year-old whose “survival instinct” kicked in as he reacted to a “traumatic incident”.
The teen who hosted the New Year’s Eve party was one of the first witnesses to give evidence in the trial. She recalled having a premonition earlier on the morning of the shooting that trouble was brewing.
“I have someone else coming,” she texted McCarthy’s co-defendant from across the room around 12.46am. “I feel like he’s going to start s***.”
She tried to uninvite the other person, whom she described as “high-tempered”, but he arrived anyway with a friend and started throwing punches immediately, she recalled.
McCarthy had been dancing and drinking with everyone else when he and his friends were “blindsided” by the attack, she said. The uninvited guest then ran back to his car with a mate, screaming profanities and laughing as they drove off, she recalled.
She then heard someone refer to a gun but was drunk and busy looking for her siblings at that point and doesn’t know who was speaking, she said.
She didn’t see McCarthy fire the gun but she turned to him after hearing a series of bangs, she said.
“I’d seen him pacing around the car when I looked back,” she said.
The witness, who cannot be named because she was under 18 at the time of the incident, is expected to continue giving evidence tomorrow as the trial continues before Justice Laura O’Gorman and the jury.
The trial is expected to last five weeks.
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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