'Give us the money or we'll shoot'

CCTV footage shows a masked man, since identified as Anitilea Chan Kee, pointing a rifle at a terrified Navtej Singh. Chan Kee has now been convicted of the storekeeper's murder. Photo / Supplied

The first sign Navtej Singh had that something was terribly wrong was the look of fear spreading across his co-worker's face.

He and Gurwinder Singh had been busy in the Riverton Liquor Store in Manurewa, serving customers who were stocking up with alcohol ahead of the usual Saturday night revelry.

It was business as usual for the two men that Saturday, June 7, 2008. They both arrived at 10am and worked through the day, leaving each other alone in the store only when they took turns at having 30-minute breaks.

The men were not related but they had become friends in 2004 when they met at Gurwinder's former workplace in Papakura.

In the same suburb, a few streets away, Anitelea Chan Kee, brothers Myron and Tino Felise, Jason Naseri, and cousins Eti Filoa and Walter McCarthy were enjoying a day that started as ordinarily as the Singhs'.

The Felise brothers and Filoa attended a 5-year-old girl's birthday party that afternoon, held in a local primary school hall.

The atmosphere was fun. It was a family affair and there was no alcohol.

But when the party finished, they went to 5 Giani Court, the home of the Felise boys' first cousin, where they were joined by Filoa, McCarthy and Chan Kee. The young men all knew one another, and once they got there, they and the other men went into the garage while the women and children stayed inside.

The small garage, in prosecutor Kieran Raftery's words, was "no Buckingham Palace" - but it was in that crowded room amid laughter, music, guitar playing and cannabis smoking that Anitelea Chan Kee hatched a plan. They had run out of alcohol and he wanted the party to continue, so suggested they should "do a liquor store", and asked for volunteers to join him.

After some hesitation and indecision about who would go, the six of them piled into two cars - Chan Kee, Myron Felise and Naseri driven by Tino Felise, with Filoa driving Walter McCarthy's mother's car.

At the liquor store, Navtej Singh and Gurwinder Singh were alone and counting the clock until they could go home to their families for the night.

But outside, McCarthy and Filoa parked slightly down the road while the others pulled up outside the liquor store. Tino Felise remained outside but Myron Felise, Chan Kee and Naseri piled out of the car.

As they did, Ma'aimoa Paea Likuohihifo was walking along the street. She watched in amazement as Chan Kee walked determinedly towards the store and, when he was about two steps away, raised a gun.

"Before he stepped into the store he [was] already getting ready to aim it, probably for the shopkeeper," she said in evidence.

Inside, Gurwinder sat on the counter with his legs dangling over the side while Navtej was behind the counter sitting on some boxes.

Gurwinder sat with his face away from the door, talking to Navtej, when he suddenly heard a noise.

Startled, he turned and looked over his shoulder and was confronted with three intruders clad in black as they burst into the store.

Chan Kee was the first, holding the rifle up as if he was about to open fire.

"One had a gun and the other had empty hands," Gurwinder Singh told the court with the help of an interpreter.

What followed was an outburst of noise and urgent voices barking orders at him. He did not understand everything said but one thing stuck in his mind: "Give us the money otherwise we'll shoot."

The demand was loud enough for Ms Likuohihifo to hear it outside.

While Felise and Naseri took alcohol from the shelves, Gurwinder begged the men to leave them alone. "Please stop, our hands [are up]. We are giving you. We are giving you. Please stop, please stop," he told them.

Stunned, Navtej slowly rose from where he was sitting on the boxes behind the counter and turned towards the till. He saw the "trigger finger" when he stepped out from behind the counter with his left hand raised and his right hand covering his chest.

Gurwinder said he thought Chan Kee was going to shoot then. "I thought they were going to pull the trigger or something. They had their finger on the trigger so I turned around and went out the back."

Terrified, he took his chance to escape when Anitelea Chan Kee took his eyes away for a moment.

"The gunman, he's like moving the eyes to Navtej side, then I hide in the back side, into the chiller out back."

He looked for something out the back to help them, but found nothing. He waited helplessly. "I couldn't understand what we [could] do."

Navtej stood frozen with his arms up. Prosecutor Kirsten Gray said Chan Kee lined him up in a "calm and deliberate way" and pulled the trigger, although he unsuccessfully claimed he fired accidentally under stress.

Mortally wounded, Navtej sank to the ground but still managed to pass the till holding $4000 cash to Chan Kee.

Gurwinder did not hear the shot and went back inside when he heard Navtej say: "I've been shot" in Punjabi. He found him sitting on the floor behind the counter, the intruders gone.

At first he could not see where Navtej had been shot. Leaning across him, he took off his shirt and saw a "red spot" on the right side of his chest.

Blood pouring from his wound, Navtej asked his friend to phone an ambulance and his wife.

As he lay critically injured waiting for ambulance staff to help, the six men returned to Giani Court and the garage where their plan had been hatched only a short time before.

As a police helicopter hovered above and sirens blared, they began drinking what they had stolen from Navtej Singh.

The party could go on.