Winston Peters meets US Secretary of State in Washington DC and negotiations over the Russia-Ukraine ceasefire continue. Video / NZ Herald, AFP
Ethan Jessop is on trial for murder, accused of shooting Peter Rasmussen in August 2021.
Prosecutors allege the shooting was planned by gang leader co-defendant Lasalosi Vaitohi from prison.
In a bizarre trip to the witness box, Jessop’s giggling ex-partner claimed her memory to be too degraded.
With a persistent, awkward giggle, a woman who drove an alleged killer to the South Auckland home of his 75-year-old victim repeatedly today insisted to jurors her memory is too degraded by drugs and the passage of time to assist them much.
“Yum,” Chauntel Laurent instead offered enthusiasticallywhen shown an evidentiary photo of her ex-partner, defendant Ethan Jessop.
His lawyers have acknowledged he was the one who shot Peter Rassmussen at the door of his Ōtāhuhu home on a Sunday evening in August 2021, days after the nation went into a Covid lockdown. But the shooting – and the deadly result – were unintended, the defence says.
Lasalosi Vaitohi, Ethan Jessop and Daziea Leslie Huia are standing trial for the murder in the High Court at Auckland. Composite photo / NZME
Vaitohi, described as the gang leader, is alleged to have plotted the shooting from prison while prosecutors said Huia offered his assistance and found a getaway car.
The original target, prosecutor Gareth Kayes said last week, was Zharn Rasmussen – a Killer Beez member known on the street as “Obey”, who was living at the same house as his grandfather while on electronically monitored community detention. He had robbed the nearby Crips drug house a week earlier, Kayes explained.
But if the younger Rasmussen couldn’t be found, the group was content to shoot at the house and anybody inside it, the prosecution has contended.
Peter Rasmussen bled to death from a single leg wound on the kitchen floor of his home. It appeared he had been trying to crawl to a landline phone to call for help.
Laurent said reluctantly today that she had driven her then-partner and another man she didn’t know to Rasmussen’s home. She was parked in the stranger’s driveway but looked out the window of the vehicle in the other direction and didn’t pay any attention, she insisted.
Most of what she did see had been lost to time, she insisted, adding that she was “mad as” by the diversion to the home because she wanted to get groceries then feed her children dinner.
“I used to be a really bad addict,” she explained, adding that her memory was very bad as a result. “I didn’t get out of bed for less than 3g. I didn’t pay attention to anything if it wasn’t what I wanted.”
She gave her evidence via an audio-video feed from another courthouse.
Prosecutors referred her repeatedly to her previous statements to police. Using the witness’ own words, Kayes asked her to refresh her memory about “when the s*** went down”.
“The boys were yelling – my partner and his friend,” she acknowledged. “I don’t know who the person [in the home] was. Just an old man.
“I just heard yelling, I heard a gun go off and I remember being told to drive.”
Peter Rasmussen was killed in August 2021.
She resisted as Kayes asked her to recount the scenario in more detail.
“I stopped paying attention,” she said. “I didn’t want to know what was going on. I’d probably just finished 3g and could see a ninja through anything.”
Laurent explained, unsolicited by prosecutors, that she had a long and sordid history with Jessop that included him leaving her for another woman for a year or so when she went to jail and their eventual semi-reconciliation and break up again.
“Yeeeah,” she said in a long, desirous drawl that revealed her American accent as she was shown another photo of the defendant.
Upon further questioning and referrals to prior police statements, she recalled her partner saying: “I think I got him in the leg.”
She described the gun used in the shooting as “big, pretty and black” and about the length of her arm. She leaned sideways on the screen, trying to show jurors the length of her own arm.
Police at Peter Rasmussen's home in August 2021 after he was fatally shot. Photo / Michael Craig
“It was nice,” she said. “It looked like a nice slug gun you’d get from a hunting shop.”
Prosecutors have previously said Jessop nicknamed the gun “Big Bad Beth” and the witness concurred. Police never found the gun.
They read aloud a transcript of a call between Jessop and Laurent.
“Can you get ahold of, um, you know where Beth went?” Jessop asked on the call.
“I don’t want Beth here until you’re here,” she responded. “I’m a little bit erratic. It’s away at my nephew’s house anyway.”
Ethan Jessop appearing in the High Court at Auckland with three others accused of murdering 75-year-old South Auckland rugby league mentor Peter Rasmussen at his home in 2021. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Defence lawyer Susan Gray, who represents Jessop, asked Laurent if the defendant got upset after learning that Rasmussen had died.
“I don’t know when he found out the man died,” she responded. “I just know from when it happened until he got put in custody he was upset and really distant.”
Laurent agreed that Jessop started drinking when they got home from the incident and had trouble sleeping from that point on.
The trial is set to continue tomorrow before Justice David Johnstone and the jury.
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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