Hospital drop-off homicide: Witnesses in Jimel Burns-Wong-Tung murder trial claim memory lapses

Jimel Desma Tiana 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

Two brothers who initially gave police vivid accounts of a confrontation between a South Auckland woman and a 22-year-old man who was stabbed to death now say they have no memory of the incident, claiming methamphetamine-induced memory loss.

Robert and Ford Stevens showed reluctance to answer even basic questions from both prosecutors and defence lawyers as they sat in the witness box over the past two days in the High Court at Auckland, where the murder trial of Jimel Desma Tiana Burns-Wong-Tung, 25, is now in its third week.

The defendant is accused of having arranged to have Rangiwhero Toia Ngaronoa detained and taken to her before she subjected him to a minute-long stabbing spree outside a Weymouth address in November 2021. She was furious, prosecutors contend, after Ngaronoa had suggested a relative of hers had engaged in sexually inappropriate behaviour.

Burns-Wong-Tung’s partner, Tago Kepa Hemopo, is also on trial, accused of being an accessory after the fact to murder and conspiring with others to injure Ngaronoa that day.

In separate, signed affidavits to police in the months after Ngaronoa’s death, the Stevens brothers both acknowledged they were in a car with the defendants as they drove to the site where Ngaronoa was to be confronted.

But in court on Monday, the majority of 20-year-old Robert Stevens’ answers ended with: “I can’t remember - I was super high.”

His older brother Ford Stevens, 21, who spent yesterday afternoon and today in the witness box, repeatedly answered with: “I don’t remember - I was high as a kite.”

“Go lock me up, I don’t give a f***,” Ford Stevens mumbled at another point, claiming at other times that he couldn’t read or that he couldn’t turn a page on a document placed before him because his finger hurt.

Because the brothers were deemed hostile witnesses, prosecutors were allowed to introduce their signed affidavits to the jury contradicting their statements in the witness box. Both men denied ever having made the statements or that the signatures at the bottom were theirs.

Robert Stevens initially told police he and his brother had been visiting Burns-Wong-Tung at her home when they learned about the sexually inappropriate behaviour claim.

“Jimel came up with a plan to have the guy be brought to us so that Jimel can ask him about what he said, and we were going to give him a hiding,” he said, according to the document. “...I remember hearing Jimel talking to Tago about it.”

They travelled together to another address and waited “to meet some Black Power members who were going to bring the guy to us”, he said, adding that a “silver truck” - a ute believed by prosecutors to have the victim detained in the back - arrived a short time later.

“Jimel got out of our car and walked up to the truck,” Robert Stevens initially told police. “Ford and I got out as well and the driver of the truck told us that only Jimel was allowed to touch the guy...

Tago Kepa Hemopo appears in the High Court at Auckland, on trial for being an accessory after the fact to murder and conspiracy to injure. Photo / Jason Oxenham

“Jimel walked up to the back door of the truck and tried to open the door but it was locked. She told the guy to open the door and managed to get it open. She said to the dude, ‘You been playing with [her relative]?’ The dude replied, ‘Yes,’ and then Jimel started stabbing him with a kitchen knife.”

The younger Stevens brother described the knife to police as “a big one”.

“The guy was holding her arms so that Jimel wouldn’t take things so far,” he said. “I could hear the guy talking and screaming. The incident lasted about two or one minute.

“...Tago was telling her that was enough and for her to come back to the car. But then she took it too far. I remember the passenger from the truck was also saying that was enough.

“The guy was bleeding a lot. There was heaps of blood. There was enough blood for someone to lose their life. Jimel came back to the car and we drove away... When we left, the guy was alive and he was being taken to the hospital by the Black Power members in the truck.”

Ford Stevens’ statement to police had many similar details, including arriving at the address and watching Burns-Wong-Tung leave their car for the other vehicle that had arrived.

“I saw Jimel and the boy sitting in the back of the truck,” he told police, according to the typed document. “I saw Jimel punching him and then I saw blood. It was quite a bit. I don’t know exactly where it came from on his body cos I was in the car.

“I saw Jimel holding a knife. I don’t remember which hand it was in but that was the hand she was punching the boy with... I heard screaming from the boy. I was trying to tell Jimel to stop.”

Ford Stevens didn’t know the stabbing victim had died until he spoke with police on the day of the statement a month later, he said in the affidavit.

Earlier in the trial, jurors watched CCTV footage of the confrontation and of Ngaronoa being dropped off at Takanini Medical Centre a short time later. He was then transferred via ambulance to Middlemore Hospital, where he died.

During cross-examination of both men, defence lawyer Ron Mansfield, KC, pointed out that CCTV showed both brothers outside the back seat of the car for a matter of only seconds. They wouldn’t have been able to see the fatal confrontation from their vantage point, he suggested.

Rangiwhero Toia Ngaronoa, 22, died in November 2021 after he was dropped off at a South Auckland medical facility with critical injuries.

The brothers alternated between saying they didn’t remember anything at all about the incident and reluctantly acknowledging they were there, but agreeing they wouldn’t have been able to see anything relevant.

“Your Honour, to be honest, I was cooked as and I can’t remember anything, so the best thing to do is to lock me up for forever long,” Ford Stevens said towards the end of his bizarre testimony, which included rubbing his face against the witness box microphone and at one point appearing to lick it.

He also repeatedly gazed towards the gallery, gesturing and mouthing words, and at one point pulled his shirt over his head.

Mansfield asked him about his long history of daily methamphetamine use and if he was currently on drugs. Ford Stevens said he hadn’t used drugs since his arrest last week, and he felt like a new man as a result - “not dumb like when I’m usually on it”.

“I’m not cooked anymore and it feels much better. This feeling makes me want to ever go back on smoking meth again.”

As he left the courtroom at the conclusion of testimony, Justice Muir wished him well in his endeavour to stay clean. The witness pounded on the wall as security escorted him out of the courtroom.

The Crown is expected to continue calling witnesses when the trial continues tomorrow.

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.