A forensic examination is conducted outside the St John ambulance station where John Harris died. Photo / NZME
A forensic examination is conducted outside the St John ambulance station where John Harris died. Photo / NZME
A man accused of killing a gang member told police he fired a shot towards a group of gang members because they had terrorised his family only hours earlier.
However, Nicky Bryan Dodd said the shot was a scare tactic rather than aiming at anyone specifically at the house onMower Rd, just north of Whangarei, just before 6am on October 18, 2016.
Dodd, 43, is accused of firing a shot from about 100m away which hit John Henry "John Boy" Harris, who was with a group of fellow Tribesmen members outside a house on Mower Rd.
Harris was taken to the St John Ambulance station on Western Hills Dr in Whangārei in a critical condition by friends and associates, but he died from a single gunshot wound about 6.40am.
A DVD interview Detective Josh Lautogo conducted with Dodd at Whangarei Police Station on April 3, 2017, was played to the jury in the High Court at Whangārei yesterday.Dodd told police his brother, Adam Dodd, rang him to say members of the Tribesmen's Far North chapter came to his house in Kensington, dragged his car out, demanded keys and fired two to three shots.
Nicky Dodd told a jury he fired a shot as a scare tactic rather than aimed to kill anybody.
Photo / John Stone
Dodd said he thought the gang members were at his brother's house when the call was made. He drove to Kensington but what Adam failed to say was that incident had happened earlier that morning.
Both brothers then went to check on another brother, Kelly, in Whakapara before Nicky Dodd drove to the intersection of State Highway 1 and Mower Rd and fired a shot from a pump action shotgun.
"My mother was screaming and crying on the phone, they traumatised my nieces and nephews. Who in their right mind would do that?" he told Lautogo.
Nicky Dodd said he just wanted to scare the Tribesmen members who were gathered outside the Mower Rd property.
"I wasn't aiming at anybody. There were too many of them. It [the shot] wasn't meant to go that far. I was half asleep at the time."
When asked what he did with the firearm, Dodd said he dumped it in a river a long time ago but wouldn't say where.
The Crown case is that Dodd fired the shot that killed Harris during a dispute over territory by the Whangarei and the Far North chapter of the Tribesmen gang and a red Holden Commodore.
A patched member who was transferred to the Far North chapter continued to live in Whangārei and the Tribesmen members in Whangārei thought he owed them further debt.
The Commodore was taken from the patched member's house on Mower Rd on October 15, 2016, and the car was later seen parked outside Adam Dodd's house in Kensington.
While retrieving the car, a group of Tribesmen from the Far North fired two shots but no one was hurt.
The car was brought back to the Mower Rd house where gang members had gathered when Harris was shot.
The trial before Justice Ailsa Duffy continues on Monday.
