Murder trial: woman had bruises frequently in time before she was killed

Ranapera Taumata, 30, is facing trial in the High Court at Napier, charged with the murder of Taylor-Jade Hira. Photo / Ric Stevens

Taylor-Jade Hira’s mother says having a black eye was “becoming the norm for her” in the months before she was killed by her partner.

A childhood friend also noted the bruises on Hira’s face, ribs, legs and arms and sent her a message.

“What’s it going to take? For him to f****** kill you?” the friend asked.

Hira’s mother Maria Rukupo took the witness stand on the second day of the trial of Ranapera Taumata, 30, who is charged with murdering her daughter in Hastings four years ago.

She described changes in her 22-year-old daughter in the months leading up to a fatal assault in the early hours of August 15, 2019.

Hira died in Wellington Hospital, from what the Crown says was an unsurvivable brain injury, when her life support was switched off three days later.

Rukupo said Hira was the youngest of her children.

The sporty young woman, who had completed her education at Hastings Girls’ High School, had three older brothers who spoiled her, bought her branded sports clothing, and she “bossed them about”.

Hira met Taumata when they travelled together to a childhood friend’s tangi up north. The Hira and Taumata families both lived on Huia Street in the suburb of Camberley.

Hira and Taumata formed a relationship. Taumata had a child by a previous partner, but Hira had never had a relationship before - “not that I know of” - her mother said.

Hira was like her normal self at the start of the relationship with Taumata, but that began to change after a couple of months, starting with a change in her attitude.

“We would ask her a question. She would snap at us,” Rukupo said.

She went from being a girl who walked down the street with her head up, smiling, to one who would walk looking at the ground, with a hoodie pulled over her head.

“That was not my baby,” Rukupo said.

Hira maintained a bedroom at her parents’ house but as the relationship moved forward, she started spending more time with Taumata, who lived in a sleepout behind his family home.

“As time went on, she was hardly home.”

Hira came home every three or four days for a shower or a change of clothes, then she was gone again.

Taylor-Jade Hira died in Wellington Hospital from a brain injury in 2019.

She began losing weight, was hunched over all the time and bruises started appearing - around her eyes, an arm, sometimes a leg, Rukupo said. She started wearing dark sunglasses, even at night-time.

Her parents tried to talk to her about what was happening, but “she didn’t want to have a bar of talking about her bruises”.

Hira would become defensive and when questioned about what was going on, she “was gone, out the door”.

“She would never look at us. Eyes down. Sunglasses on,” Rukupo told the Napier Crown Solicitor, Steve Manning.

Taumata has pleaded not guilty to murder, and also to injuring Hira with intent to injure, following alleged assaults that were captured on video cameras on the outside of the Taumata residence.

On Wednesday, the High Court at Napier was played other footage taken from the cameras, this time of Hira’s father, Hauraki Hira, coming to the house looking for his daughter a week before she died.

On the video, Hauraki Hira parks a car in front of the property and walks up to a high closed gate. He does not enter the property.

The camera shows a woman, identified by Hauraki Hira as his daughter, come up to the gate, and turn around and walk away again almost immediately.

Questioned about the encounter by Manning, Hauraki Hira said he told his daughter he was checking up on her and asked her if she was all right.

He said her response was: “I’m all right. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Cross-examined by defence counsel Harry Redwood, Hauraki Hira said he had never seen his daughter and Taumata have any physical altercations.

Nor had he seen any physical injuries on Taylor-Jade.

But he said that on the night before she was injured, he and his daughter went to get a meal from McDonald’s, which she ate at her parents’ house.

He said that on that occasion, his daughter was “wearing glasses in the dark”.

Hira’s friend since childhood, Eden Vaerua-Apai, gave evidence of seeing bruises on Taylor-Jade’s face, ribs legs and arms, which began appearing about a month into the relationship.

Manning asked her how many times she had seen the bruises.

“So many times I can’t remember,” Vaerua-Apai said.

Vaerua-Apai struggled to contain her emotions as she read to the jury a Facebook message she had sent to her friend nine days before she died.

“How low are you going let him make you go till you realise all the f***** up s*** he is putting you through? What’s it going to take? For him to f****** kill you?” the message said.

Taylor-Jade responded by saying that she wanted to keep the friendship, but she did not need other people putting their noses in her business.

Vaerua-Apai responded: “I hope one day you wake up and realise that none of this is normal.”

The trial, before Justice Christine Grice and a jury of eight women and four men, is continuing.