The man accused of shooting Hawke's Bay farmer Jack Nicholas in 2004 told a neighbour that he'd been in an angry confrontation with Mr Nicholas over hunting access across his farm two weeks earlier.
Murray Kenneth Foreman, 50, also told the neighbour on the morning of Mr Nicholas'
shooting that he "may have shot somebody" and was going to get rid of his hunting rifle.
The depositions hearing is being held in Napier District Court before Justice David McKegg, where Mr Foreman faces one charge of murdering Mr Nicholas on August 27, 2004, and one of procuring a witness to give false evidence.
The neighbour, Donna Kingi, who was living next to Mr Foreman and his son at Haumoana, near Hastings, in 2004, said two weeks before the fatal shooting at Puketitiri, northwest of Napier, Mr Foreman had returned abruptly from a planned weekend hunting trip with his son Che.
He told her that some "f.....g farmer" had refused to let him onto his property.
She described Foreman as being "shitty, angry and upset" about the incident.
Early on the morning of November 27, 2004, Foreman had arrived home in his car.
Ms Kingi said he looked "clammy" and his face was white. He told her: "Girl, I think I shot someone" and said he was going to break up his hunting rifle and get rid of it.
During a later conversation that afternoon, he told her he'd broken down the gun and hidden it on ledges under a friend's house.
When she heard about the shooting of Mr Nicholas on the 6pm news that night, the earlier conversation with Foreman had "crossed her mind".
She asked if the farmer who had been killed was the one he'd had the confrontation with two weeks earlier and Foreman said it was. She replied that he didn't have anything to worry about because his trip out there was two weeks previously.
Foreman then told her he'd been out to the Puketitiri area "for a drive" on the morning of the shooting.
- NZPA
