Two women, Shayde Carolyn Weston and Pania Ella Waaka, have already been convicted of Tongia’s murder and being a party to his murder, respectively.
The Crown’s case is that the woman on trial was angry after Tongia assaulted her after he’d been attacked with a hammer. It’s alleged she then sent Facebook messages to Weston, saying “kill him” and “this n***** needs to go permanently”.
The woman has said she can’t recall sending the messages. Her lawyer Elizabeth Hall said the messages are irrelevant and Weston would have shot Tongia regardless.
During a police interview played to the jury, the niece told police she’d been woken by a baby crying before hearing a loud noise.
Her teenage cousin, who was also living at the house, had come into her room asking if she was okay. Assuming it was fireworks, she’d gone back to sleep.
Neighbour Marina Houia told the court earlier that night she’d seen Weston and the accused woman kissing outside their house, after they’d left a party at her place. The Crown says it’s that kiss that angered and upset Tongia, prompting him to beat up Weston while she slept in the woman’s bed.
It says Weston was angry at being beaten and wanted revenge when she returned to the Karori house, first with friends who’d beaten Tongia with a hammer, and again in the early hours, shooting Tongia while he slept beside the woman in her bed.
The niece said she heard nothing and wasn’t aware Tongia was shot until she got up in the morning.
During a video interview, the niece described hearing Tongia and Weston fighting upstairs, but couldn’t hear what they were saying. She said Weston was crying hysterically, and her face was “huge” from the beating.
She heard Weston say she was going to come back and shoot Tongia in the face.
The woman, who was nursing a hangover, was sleeping in a bedroom downstairs and caring for the accused woman’s two young children that night. She’d only come upstairs intermittently throughout the night.
But she’d seen Tongia again that night, after he’d been beaten with a hammer, a pillowcase over his head to stem the bleeding. Tongia was bleeding and hurt, but was alive, she told police.
Standing on the driveway hours later, after Tongia had been found dead and first responders had arrived, she told the court she’d initially thought maybe he’d died from that hammer attack.
It was only when ambulance staff suggested he’d been stabbed and later police confirmed he’d been shot, that they discovered how he’d died.
The next morning: She could see he was dead
The niece told the court she’d woken her aunt in the morning when she’d gone into the bedroom to collect a nappy for the baby. Her aunt was sleeping on her single bed, with Tongia beside her.
Nothing looked amiss, she told the court.
The woman got up and followed her downstairs, where they laughed about the previous night’s events.
During the conversation, they’d agreed Tongia had made a bit of an egg of himself and they’d also laughed at Weston’s comment that she planned to come back and shoot Tongia in the face.
She agreed with Hall that at that point, neither knew that Tongia was dead.
Her aunt had gone back to bed, only to return seconds later saying something was wrong with Tongia.
The niece said her aunt stood at the bottom of the stairs, having a panic attack and unable to talk, and looked like she was going to vomit. She was unable to look up the stairs and didn’t go back up there.
The niece said that when she walked into the room, she could see that Tongia was dead. She left the room and called for one of her cousins to come before using her aunt’s phone to call emergency services.
The trial before Justice Paul Radich is expected to take three weeks.
Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice.
