Man convicted over cousin's death

Rimu Morrell's family and friends erupted in sobs as he was found guilty of manslaughter in the High Court at Gisborne.

Morrell, who turns 21 on Sunday, was convicted of the assault and manslaughter of his cousin Weylin Ngarangione, who he said was like a brother to him. He had hit him on the head with a bottle at a party. His cousin died four days later.

It took the jury six hours forty minutes to reach a unanimous verdict on both charges.

Morrell was remanded in custody yesterday while the issue of bail is considered.

He will be sentenced in Gisborne on May 7.

In June last year, Morrell assaulted Mr Ngarangione by punching him in the head and caused his death by striking him on the head with a bottle in a drunken brawl at a cousin's birthday party in Manutuke.

Mr Ngarangione died from a brain abscess four days after being cleared by a doctor at Gisborne Hospital. The abscess was the result of an infection from a compound fracture to his skull from the bottle blow. The Crown said it started "the chain of causation" of his death.

The incident happened after Mr Ngarangione became jealous of his brother Selwyn, who was talking to his friends.

Mr Ngarangione hit Selwyn in the face about 10 times but could not knock him down. Selwyn did not retaliate at first but then punched his brother in the face and walked away.

Then, while Mr Ngarangione was on a couch, Morrell tried to punch him in the head in what a witness described as "throwing his two cents in".

The assault was broken up and a relative took Mr Ngarangione away to calm him down.

Mr Ngarangione then went into the kitchen, got a sharpened butcher's knife and stabbed two of his brother's car tyres.

Morrell left the garage and walked up a darkened driveway toward his grandmother's house, where he was going to ring the police, he told the court.

That's when he encountered Mr Ngarangione.

"He came running up to me and it was dark, and I was scared of him because he had a knife earlier - so I threw a bottle," Morrell said.

"I turned around and he grabbed me, then I grabbed him and we both ended up in the ditch. I threw a few uppercuts and he was hugging my legs, and then he started biting me."

Morrell ripped his legs away and went back into the garage where, in the light, he saw blood on his hands and shirt that was not his.

The police then arrived. Mr Ngarangione was taken to Gisborne Hospital in an ambulance while Morrell and other partygoers went to bars in Gisborne.

Doctor Linh Bui stitched Mr Ngarangione's head and cleared him of any brain injury by performing neurological tests. He did not find the fracture to his skull even after putting his finger in the wound.

Mr Ngarangione called his mother Judith the next day complaining of head pains and asked to be taken to a doctor. She picked him up from Manutuke, but when they arrived in Gisborne he became agitated and did not want to go.

Mr Ngarangione's brother Aaron found him dead in his mother's lounge three days later, after believing the night before he was asleep.

Dr Tim Koelmeyer, the pathologist who conducted the post-mortem, told the court the undiagnosed fracture led to infection of the brain, which caused an abscess and swelling, then death.

It was "extremely uncommon" to die of a brain abscess because of readily-available antibiotics, he said.

Crown prosecutor Steve Manning argued Morrell used excessive force when he "bottled" Mr Ngarangione, which led to his death.

Defence counsel Chris Wilkinson-Smith said Morrell used reasonable force to defend himself because he perceived a "potentially life-threatening situation" because of Mr Ngarangione's knife.

- NZPA