Beach Haven murder trial: Teens, 14 and 17, both guilty of Joshuah Tasi’s stabbing death

A 17-year-old and 14-year-old accused of inflicting a co-ordinated, frenzied stabbing attack on a stranger after a minor traffic accident in a North Shore, Auckland suburb have both been found guilty of murder.

The teens, now 19 and 15, both wore white t-shirts - the older defendant standing directly behind the younger - today as jurors in the High Court at Auckland returned the verdicts after eight hours of deliberations over two days.

The younger defendant appeared to shift nervously as the guilty verdict for his co-defendant was read aloud by the jury foreman.

The courtroom gallery, filled with family members for the defendants and the victim, remained quiet save for one person who yelled out, “Love you, son”.

The duo, who continue to have interim name suppression, were arrested in March last year after Joshuah Tasi, 28, bled to death next to his crashed silver van on Beach Haven Rd.

Moments earlier, Tasi had honked at the duo’s BMW and called the older defendant a “dickhead” as he drove around them at an intersection they had been blocking, a witness testified shortly after the trial began last week.

The older defendant then allegedly sped to catch up with Tasi and cut in front of him - resulting in the minor crash, which caused Tasi’s bumper to fall off.

“They acted in unison,” Crown prosecutor Brett Tantrum said during his closing address, explaining that both defendants took off their shirts and got out of the BMW before approaching both front doors of Tasi’s vehicle - giving him no means of escape.

“They then embarked on a sudden and violent attack on Mr Tasi... [He] didn’t have a chance.”

Tasi suffered multiple stab wounds to his head and upper body, including two that were delivered with such force they went in one side of his body and out the other.

The fatal knife thrust penetrated a rib bone and pierced his lung. It would have caused his death within minutes, a pathologist estimated.

The older defendant’s fingerprint was found on the driver’s side of Tasi’s vehicle, while the younger defendant’s fingerprint was found on the passenger side. Tasi’s blood was found inside their BMW, prosecutors alleged.

In the immediate aftermath of the estimated 10-15 second attack, the duo appeared to be in a celebratory mood, Tantrum told jurors this week.

Defence lawyers objected to the characterisation.

“That’s what happens when you come to Beach Haven” one witness recalled the defendants yelling, as they jumped up and down.

Another bystander described one of the defendants making a hand gesture he described as a “dog signal” - a raised with pinky and thumb extended.

The gesture was repeatedly referred to - by both the prosecution and the defence - but jurors were not explicitly told it is often used to show allegiance to the Mongrel Mob.

Prosecutors said the celebratory attitude showed the defendants had hatched a plan and were congratulating each other on a job well done.

“Both ... were delighted with the outcome,” Tantrum said.

Joshuah Tasi was fatally stabbed in the North Shore suburb of Beach Haven.

Defence lawyer John Clearwater, who represented the younger of the two teens, argued that it would have been impossible for his client to hold a knife while making such a sign.

Even if the younger defendant was unarmed and didn’t stab the victim, jurors had the option of finding him guilty of murder if they believed he was aiding or encouraging his co-defendant to do so.

Clearwater argued his client was too young to have formulated an “orchestrated, pre-meditated plan” in the seconds before the stabbing began.

“You may think young people like [him] are psychologically wired differently to adults,” he explained.

“In this brief window of time ... a 14-year-old youth would not fully grasp the severity of his actions ... to foresee the tragic outcome of death.”

Marie Taylor-Cyphers, who represented the older of the two defendants, took a similar approach in her address to the jury.

“The case for [him] is simple: He did not intend to kill Mr Tasi,” she explained.

She acknowledged her client did get out of his BMW and approach Tasi, his heart racing from the crash as “things got heated very quickly”.

But of all the wounds Tasi suffered, none would have been obviously fatal, the defence lawyer argued.

“As distasteful as this comparison is, it was not a slit throat,” she said.

“This is not the cut of someone who had set out to end someone’s life.”

She argued that authorities were too quick to jump to a conclusion that it had been a murder over a trivial traffic incident, excluding any other explanation early on.

“Nobody saw what was happening inside the van,” she explained, suggesting that Tasi could have driven off but didn’t for some reason.

“No one saw Mr Tasi’s hands. No one saw what he was doing.”

She said it “just makes no sense” the young duo would “immediately make a plan to kill him”.

But they didn’t have to set out specifically to kill Tasi to be found guilty of his murder, prosecutor Tantrum pointed out.

Another way to be found guilty of murder is to seriously assault someone knowing that death might be a possible result and taking that risk anyway.

Jurors could safely draw an inference, he said, that there was a plan to stab the victim - regardless of whether there was a plan in place to kill him.

“There is no doubt that [they] together killed Joshuah Tasi,” Tantrum said.

“Mr Tasi’s stab wounds were not an accident.”

Tasi was remembered in the days following his death as an immensely talented guitarist who was always singing and laughing and flashing a smile that could “melt any heart”.

“He would often show up to work with different hairstyles, glasses, hats and shoes,” his co-workers at RJ Don Panelbeaters recalled in a statement.

“He was a real character with lots of charisma and funk. We miss him so much.”

He was farewelled last year with a public service at Glenfield College that included a karanga and haka.

Justice David Johnstone set a sentencing date for the teens for July.

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.