Jury told accused 'enraged' at seeing victim touch ex-partner's bottom

Sameh Khalil Salem Ali, 42, is on trial in the High Court at Hamilton.

Seeing another man's hand on the bottom of his former partner, sent a Hamilton man into a rage, slitting the back of the complainant's neck, a High Court jury was told today.

Sameh Khalil Salem Ali, 42, is on trial defending a charge of attempted murder from an alleged incident in a Chartwell house on October 20 last year.

Ali, who faces an alternative charge of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, allegedly told friends immediately after the alleged late night incident that he just "snapped" after seeing the hand of the victim, Mika Taupau, on his ex partner's bottom.

Crown prosecutor Ross Douch told the jury of seven women and five men that Ali, his former partner Leone Macwan, and other friends had been drinking at the Sefton Cres house when the victim turned up.

After a while, Ali, who was staying at the house, went into the sleep-out of another occupant.

Macwan and Taupau went for a walk before returning and watching television in a bedroom.

Douch said Ali went into the house and heard laughing. Armed with a knife, he is accused of going inside and cutting the back of Taupau's neck - an injury which stretched between 12cm and 15cm.

The cut began at the back of his right ear and around the back of his neck.

As all of the major vessels are in the front of the neck, Taupau avoided a major injury and was discharged from hospital the following day.

Douch said Ali disappeared but was found soon after by a police dog handler.

It is alleged Ali told the cop, "what else would you do if you found him with your missus?"

Prior to being found, Ali went around and knocked on the door of a friend's house, waking the couple.

Ali was allegedly in a "distressed state" and made a number of comments that he heard them laughing in the room and "saw his hand on Macwan's arse and he snapped".

"He said that he had cut him, and threw the knife away and that he thought that he had killed him."

However, in her opening address, defence counsel Rhiana Laybourn said her client denied cutting Taupau or having anything to do with his injury.

"The first he knew of the attack on the [complainant] was when he was standing outside the house near the garage with [flatmate] who lived in the garage.

"The victim emerged from the house, he had a bloody towel against his neck and accused both men of cutting him."

Laybourn said it was Taupau who attacked her client and the flatmate by punching them.

Ali then fled, both out of fear and for his safety because he had been accused of stabbing him.

Laybourn said he denied making any admissions to anyone.