Murder accused (from left) Trizarn Henare, Rua Hune, Tuarima Alexander, and Takarangi Kumar are facing trial in the High Court at Napier. Photo / Ric Stevens
Murder accused (from left) Trizarn Henare, Rua Hune, Tuarima Alexander, and Takarangi Kumar are facing trial in the High Court at Napier. Photo / Ric Stevens
Homeless man Boy Taylor was a vulnerable person alone on the nighttime streets of Napier – or he was the “armed and dangerous” instigator of the violence that killed him.
Crown lawyers and defence counsel have presented these two different pictures of Taylor and the early-morning fracas which ledto his death and the trial of four men charged with his murder.
The jury in the High Court at Napier has been shown security camera footage of the four men’s attack on Taylor, which lasted for more than two minutes.
The video, caught on a camera from inside an optometrist’s shop on the other side of the street, shows the four men punching, kicking and stomping on the homeless man.
“What you saw in that footage was not a momentary loss of control … but a sustained, repeated and escalating attack,” Crown prosecutor Fiona Cleary told the jurors.
However, defence lawyers say that at the start of the melee, Taylor smashed two bottles and threw one of them, and then lashed out with the other broken bottle.
They say he did so without provocation.
Taylor saw ‘advancing threat’
Cleary said that Taylor, 58, was trying to protect himself from what he saw as an “advancing threat” as the four accused walked towards him on Emerson St in the Napier CBD about 2.35 am on December 18, 2024.
But defence lawyer Eric Forster said Taylor started the violence, and a broken bottle was a cutting instrument.
“At that point, I suggest to you, he was armed and dangerous,” Forster told the jury.
Boy Taylor (inset) was attacked and died on Emerson St, Napier. Photo (main) / Doug Laing
The four men who came across Taylor after they had been on a night out drinking were Tuarima Issac Alexander, 22, Rua Waka Hune, 34, Takarangi Kumar, 19, and Trizarn Henare, 20.
Their defence turns upon a provision of the Crimes Act that defines murder: to be guilty of murder, a person must intend to cause another’s death or be “reckless” about whether their actions are likely to cause that person to die.
The defence lawyers say these conditions were absent.
Cleary, however, said the accused had made “deliberate choices” to start and continue the violence, which caused Taylor multiple head injuries.
“It’s not a difficult concept,” she said. “Kicking a man on the ground carries a real and obvious risk of killing him.”
But Forster, representing Henare, said his client, who sustained injuries to his leg and face in the fracas, was “an unarmed man against an armed man”.
“Boy Taylor started the violence. Trizarn Henare came in and confronted him, [saying] ‘Why are you doing this?’,” Forster said.
Kumar’s lawyer, Leo Lafferty, said there was some “ferocity” in Taylor’s act of breaking the bottles. The broken glass was spread out over some distance.
He said the contention that his client went suddenly from “cruise mode to murderous intent” did not make any sense.
“The death of Mr Taylor is tragic, and what you see may be an affront to your senses, but do not reason back from that that the charge of murder is proven,” Lafferty said.
“You must put aside your emotions,” he told the jurors.
Matthew Phelps, for Hune, also said the throwing of the bottle was the “catalyst” for the group’s approach to Taylor.
“This was not a planned assault. A few moments earlier, the group were discussing how they would get home,” Phelps said.
He said the incident had lasted 140 seconds, and in an ideal world, the four would simply have walked away from Taylor.
Boy Taylor was living mainly on the street at the time he died.
“The fact that they didn’t does not make them guilty of murder,” Phelps said.
“During those 140 seconds, the prospect of Mr Taylor’s death did not cross Mr Hune’s mind.”
Hune also received a cut to his face during the incident.
For Alexander, Nicola Graham said the group had interacted with other people on the street and had walked past Taylor earlier with “no issues”.
After the group left the scene, Alexander, who had been the “least involved” in what happened, had no awareness of how serious the assault on Taylor had been.
“He [Alexander] is guilty of manslaughter, but not guilty of murder,” she said.
In addition to denying murder charges, the four men have pleaded not guilty to injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm in relation to another man, who was assaulted earlier the same night.
Justice David Boldt is due to sum up the case tomorrow. The jury of nine men and three women will then retire to consider its verdict.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.
