A former student rugby standout who was arrested on Boxing Day 2022 after his longtime girlfriend opened his moving car’s passenger door on an Auckland motorway, dying in a crash just moments later, has been acquitted of manslaughter but found guilty of kidnapping.
Jovan Aroha Zachariah Pora, 22, told jurors in the High Court at Auckland last week that the death of Katelyn Rua-Tuaou was a terrible accident and that he only had her best interests in mind. He testified that he was trying to get the belligerently drunk 19-year-old safely to the New Lynn home they shared with his family after she had so much to drink at her father’s house that she would have been four-and-a-half times over the limit to drive herself.
The defendant bowed his head, seemingly in relief, as the first verdict - not guilty to manslaughter - was read aloud by the jury foreman. He stared ahead blankly moments later as the verdict rejecting his version of events - guilty to kidnapping - was announced.
It took jurors roughly eight hours of deliberations over two days to reach the split decision, which also included a guilty finding for failure to permit a blood specimen on the morning of the crash. He earlier pleaded guilty to driving while his license had been revoked.
Prosecutors Henry Benson-Pope and Cam Fountain had painted a much darker picture of the circumstances that night involving a violently jealous boyfriend, allegations of infidelity and Rua-Tuhou being so afraid of another beating that she opened the passenger door on the motorway in a desperate effort to escape.
They accused Pora of taking Rua-Tuhou from her father’s house against her will and of “fright response” manslaughter, which occurs when a threatened person’s fight or flight response leads to their death.
Because of their years-long relationship, Rua-Tuhou initially got into the parked car with the defendant willingly, Benson-Pope said during his closing address, describing what he said was the “difficult reality in this case”. But it was clear that she didn’t want to be with him when Pora began accusing her of infidelity, he said.
“Ms Rua-Tuhou became scared and began screaming and trying to get away,” Benson-Pope said of the chaotic scene described by witnesses outside her father’s Manurewa home. “Her family were running out of the house and saw her screaming ... trying to get out.
“The defendant wouldn’t let her go. He drove a scared, still struggling Katelyn Rua-Tuhou away.”
She had good reason to be scared, prosecutors said, noting an incident five months earlier in which Pora acknowledged having assaulted his partner. Pora claimed to have been so drunk that he couldn’t remember any details, but text messages from Rua-Tuhou’s phone suggested a prolonged, terrifying attack at their home.
“I really thought he was going to kill me,” she wrote. “I’m scared.” Their bickering continued on for months, with the defendant at one point just weeks before Rua-Tuhou’s death sending a message in all caps threatening: “IM HANDIN YOUR NUDES OUT EVERYWHERE TOO YA SNAKE”. The messages, prosecutors said, helped show jurors how suspicions of infidelity became “triggers to violence” for the defendant.
“The defendant is not a man who lightly lets go of an argument,” Benson-Pope said. “He was fuming. He was really angry, and he was not willing to let this go. He continued to confront, abuse and confine Rua-Tuhou en route.
“...He took her against her will and five minutes later she died trying to escape.”
Pora and Rua-Tuhou had begun dating about two years earlier, after he returned to Auckland following a rugby scholarship in Japan. While small in stature himself, he was described as bigger, stronger and able to restrain the 51kg victim.
But defence lawyers Vivienne Feyen and Holly Aitken insisted Rua-Tuhou hadn’t been frightened that morning, describing her instead as “a highly intoxicated young girl who didn’t agree with the plan” to drop her off at home so Pora could continue socialising without her.
“Her actions were influenced by large amounts of alcohol and cannabis,” Feyen said during her closing address, describing Rua-Tuhou as someone who when intoxicated became “unpredicatable, erratic, uncontrolled and aggressive”. She also had an established history, Feyen said, of trying to jump out of moving cars.
“Concerns for Katelyn’s safety when she was highly intoxicated was not new for Jovan,” Feyen argued.
Witnesses called by the defence described two other occasions when Rua-Tuhou tried to exit moving vehicles - neither of which, the witnesses said, were prompted by threats of violence or fear. On one of the occasions, Pora’s younger brother testified, Rua-Tuhou repeatedly opened a passenger door - insisting she wanted to be with her partner - as she was driven to her father’s house because she was too drunk to stay at the Pora family home. That night ended with her in police custody.
Feyen pointed out that in the hours before her death, Rua-Tuhou had texted her boyfriend 10 times while he hung out with his best mate in Ōtara - not the actions, she suggested, of someone who didn’t want to be with him. “If you don’t answer your phone I’m coming there,” she texted at one point.
When Pora arrived at the home of Rua-Tuhou’s father, he said things got heated and confused - with her father at one point hitting him with a guitar to get him out of the house. He said he ran after his car after seeing it roll down the driveway with Rua-Tuhou behind the wheel. He acknowledged an argument followed.
He said he drove away from the property in fear after seeing family members walk towards his car, but he insisted his intention was only to get his partner home safely.
“Jovan Pora drove in one direction. He drove in the direction of home,” his lawyer said, pointing out that his car was a manual transmission. “How possible is it for him to be continually restraining a struggling Katelyn when he clearly had to carry out a number of gear changes on the drive to State Highway 20?”
The Crown countered that the previous occasions in which Rua-Tuhou had allegedly tried to exit a moving vehicle involved “way different context”. On this occasion, Benson-Pope said, Pora had spent hours stewing and drinking after his friends had suggested Rua-Tuhou had been flirting with one of them on Christmas Eve morning. One of the friends testified he tried to convince Pora not to leave because he was “drunk and not in the right mind”, prosecutors noted.
“A possible infidelity by Katelyn was at the forefront of Mr Pora’s mind that evening,” Benson-Pope said. “The purpose wasn’t to pick her up. It was to confront her.”
He also referred to a 111 call made by Rua-Tuhou’s cousin immediately after Pora left with his screaming passenger in which the cousin was adamant Rua-Tuhou had been kidnapped.
“She’s screaming for her f***ing life saying, ‘No, let me go!’” the cousin told the operator during the call, which was ongoing as the fatal crash occurred. “What do you do when you see your cousin screaming for her life and you can’t even grab her?”
The defence had dismissed the call as confused and inaccurate - the result of an evening in which most witnesses had been drinking.
Jurors, however, seemed not so quick to dismiss it. They requested to hear the recording again shortly after returning to deliberate.
Kidnapping carries a maximum possible sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment. Justice Mathew Downs set a sentencing date for August.
Until today, Pora had been free on electronically monitored bail. Given his young age, lack of prior criminal record and acquittal on the manslaughter charge, that might have continued to be the case until sentencing, Justice Downs said today. But the judge instead ordered him to be held in custody until sentencing after it was brought to his attention that the defendant had early yesterday morning contacted a Crown witness in the case via Facebook Messenger.
His lawyer noted that the witness had already testified so it couldn’t be seen as an effort to influence the trial. Regardless, the judge responded, it was highly inappropriate.
“Thes messages were intimidating in tone and they expressed the proposition that it would be unfortunate if Mr Pora and [the witness] were to encounter each other,” the judge noted. “I consider it serious that Mr Pora has contacted a prosecution witness in a threatening and intimidatory manner.
“I am not persuaded, Mr Pora, that you should have bail pending your sentencing.”
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.
Police say it's fortunate staff weren’t knocking on someone’s door to advise of a death.