Paramedic tells of finding injured man in pool of vomit

A St John Ambulance advanced paramedic said a man who later died in hospital was face down in a pool of his own vomit and

A Napier paramedic, called to a flat in the Hawke's Bay city, found a 43-year-old man lying unresponsive in a bed, suffering life-threatening injuries, a murder trial in the High Court of Wellington was told today.

Grant Linton Gray, a St John Ambulance advanced paramedic, said Paul Robert Carrodus was face down in a pool of his own vomit and "critically ill".

Besides head and other injuries, the sickness beneficiary had also been stabbed in the chest.

That was on October 6, 2009. Mr Carrodus was taken by ambulance to Hawke's Bay Regional Hospital where he died four days later.

Mr Gray was giving evidence at the trial of Tyson Bennett, 19, who has denied murdering Mr Carrodus.

Bennett's flatmate, Aaron Isaac Hudson, 24, pleaded guilty late last year to manslaughter for his contribution to the injuries inflicted on Mr Carrodus.

The older man had been temporarily sleeping in the lounge of the two-bedroom Pirimai flat shared by Bennett, Hudson and their respective girlfriends.

Early that morning Hudson's partner had given birth to a son and the men had been celebrating. They were drinking beer and homebrew vodka, and "spotting" cannabis.

Over the course of several hours, Mr Carrodus was assaulted about eight times. Allegedly Bennett - riled up by the victim - was the primary attacker.

At one stage Mr Carrodus stabbed the accused with a steak knife from the kitchen and superficially wounded Hudson with the same blade when he tried to separate the pair.

Mr Gray said Hudson was at the flat when ambulance staff arrived.

"He seemed a bit agitated and didn't seem to want our care."

Napier police Constable Dwayne Davies said that when he reached the scene Bennett approached him from the front lawn of a nearby house and showed him two bleeding stab wounds to his chest.

Mr Davies accompanied Bennett and Hudson to hospital in an ambulance.

Earlier in the trial, which started on Tuesday and is expected to run into next week, Judith Ann Hudson said she had been the birth coach for her son Aaron's girlfriend.

After the couple's baby boy was born in the early hours of October 6, she went home to bed.

That afternoon Aaron and Tyson Bennett arrived at her place and said they had been stabbed.

"I thought they were joking."

Bennett showed her two open slits on his chest and her son had a puncture wound to his upper abdomen.

The pair told Mrs Hudson that Mr Carrodus had attacked Bennett with a serrated knife he took from the kitchen bench.

Hudson had been stabbed when he tried to get the weapon off the 43-year-old.

When the men left the flat, Bennett was holding Mr Carrodus by the shoulder with one hand and had the other hand clenched "as though he was going to hurt him".

She screamed at her son to stop them. After intervening he asked her what to do next and the witness told him to give the seemingly shaken Mr Carrodus a shower "and we'll see".

After the shower, Aaron Hudson put the injured man to bed and left the flat.

Bennett was "beating his chest with both hands". He asked her to stay, "because I keep him calm".

Mrs Hudson said she growled at the accused.

"My (new baby) grandson was meant to be coming home."

The baby and his mother could not come into the flat as it was.

"There was blood everywhere."

Mrs Hudson said she left. "I went straight to my children's father's place."

- NZPA