Hospital drop-off homicide: Witness in Jimel Burns-Wong-Tung trial recounts exchange with victim Rangiwhero Ngaronoa

Jimel Burns-Wong-Tung is on trial for murder in the High Court at Auckland, accused of killing 22-year-old Rangiwhero Toia Ngaronoa in November 2021. Photo / Michael Craig

A concerned mother, whose queries about her toddler’s safety are believed by prosecutors to have unintentionally set off a chain of events resulting in a man’s fatal stabbing, testified through sobs today as she tried to clear the stabbing victim’s name.

Rangiwhero Toia Ngaronoa, 22, died on the afternoon of November 21, 2021, after he was dropped off at Takanini Urgent Care then rushed via ambulance to Middlemore Hospital.

“He was a loving person,” said the witness, explaining that Ngaronoa, a former roommate, had been close to her and her daughter. “I never accused him of touching my daughter. I just asked, ‘What did you do?’ thinking he smacked her.

“I never, ever accused him of touching my daughter in any dirty way.”

Prosecutors say their argument got back to murder defendant Jimel Desma Tiana Burns-Wong-Tung after Ngaronoa indicated his suspicion that the child had been subjected to sexually inappropriate behaviour but not by him. It was a relative of Burns-Wong-Tung who should be suspected, he would eventually say.

That allegation put Burns-Wong-Tung into a rage that prompted her to arrange to have Ngaronoa beaten up, detained and taken to her before she subjected him to a minute-long stabbing spree as he was trapped in the back of a ute, prosecutors have said.

“I never touched your baby, that you are now accusing me of,” Ngaronoa said in a Facebook Messenger exchange with the witness on the day before his death. “It confuses me because that day when she did get touch, I broke down in front of you, told you who touched her. I never had my hand on your daughter or even had the envious thought of even touching your daughter in that sacred place ...”

In a series of messages that followed, the mother seemed confused and startled.

“OK, you’re saying my baby got touched by who???” she asked, demanding immediately after: “Who touched her?”

She added minutes later: “Honest I was talking bout you smacking her, not touching her like that lol. But who n in what way???”

Ngaronoa offered to discuss the matter in person but refused to name anyone in a message that could be shared with others via screenshot. The mother went to his house immediately but he still wouldn’t say, she recalled today.

“I just wanted the truth for my baby,” the mother testified, sobbing again. “I was just trying to be a mother first.

“She just wouldn’t go near him and I just thought it was weird. I just thought maybe he was smacking her.”

Eventually, the witness said, she learned third-hand through another person who Ngaronoa was accusing. She went to visit Burns-Wong-Tung later that day and mentioned the allegation, she said, emphasising today that she also didn’t suspect the defendant’s relative of inappropriate behaviour.

“You both thought that was nonsense?” defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC asked her.

“Yes,” she said.

Burns-Wong-Tung, 25, is joined in the dock by her partner, Tago Kepa Hemopo, 34, who was charged with accessory after the fact to murder and conspiring with the defendant and others to injure Ngaronoa that day. Two other co-defendants, brothers Rocky and Thomas Ngapera, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to injure last week, jurors learned today.

Burns-Wong-Tung’s mother, Kelly-Anne Burns, has also been charged with conspiracy to injure but is not currently on trial.

Tago Kepa Hemopo appears in the High Court at Auckland in relation to the death of Rangiwhero Toia Ngaronoa in November 2021. Photo / Jason Oxenham

During a brief opening statement yesterday, Hemopo’s lawyer, Dale Dufty, denied allegations that his client helped Burns-Wong-Tung plan an attack or that he helped her evade arrest afterwards by getting rid of her car.

He acknowledged that Hemopo and Burns-Wong-Tung showed up together at a Weymouth, South Auckland cul de sac where the stabbing is alleged to have occurred.

“All that shows you about Mr Hemopo is he was a driver. He drove from A to B,” Dufty said. “It doesn’t mean he was a conspirator ... ”

Hemopo did later hand off the car to someone else, but it was intended as a temporary trade so the car could be serviced by a mechanic, he said, urging jurors to consider that prosecutors may be putting a “sinister spin” on his client’s actions when there was none.

Burns-Wong-Tung’s lawyer declined to address the jury at the outset of the trial but will have another opportunity to do so when the Crown finishes calling witnesses.

Jurors began their day by watching for a third day in a row CCTV footage that prosecutors have said shows the moment Burns-Wong-Tung stabbed Ngaronoa eight times, including fatal wounds to his chest and his back.

The video, taken from a neighbouring property’s security camera, showed a woman approaching the back seat of a ute. Although her actions are somewhat difficult to discern due to the distance of the camera, she could then be seen switching a knife between hands before “lunging” into the open vehicle door that is facing away from the camera, prosecutors contend.

The footage seen today was zoomed in on the vehicle, more clearly showing what appeared to be a struggle of some sort.

The Crown is expected to continue calling witnesses when the trial resumes on Monday before Justice Matthew Muir 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.