Policeman haunted by shooting of two mates

John Ward Skinner (left) and Iain Clegg. Photos / Glenn Jeffrey

An experienced undercover policeman says he is haunted by the night a fellow officer was fatally shot in a botched bugging operation.

The senior sergeant, whose name is suppressed, was giving evidence at the depositions hearing for John Ward Skinner, 37, and Iain Lindsay Clegg, 33, in the Manukau District Court yesterday.

The pair are jointly charged with murdering Sergeant Don Wilkinson and attempting to murder another undercover officer, whose name is suppressed, while they were trying to plant a tracking device in a car.

Skinner is also charged with assault with a weapon, after allegedly pointing a rifle at a third undercover officer involved in the operation.

The 42-year veteran gave evidence at a closed hearing yesterday, describing the minutes leading up to the fatal attack on Mr Wilkinson and the other officer, who was shot three times with a powerful air rifle.

The trio were staking out a house on Hain Ave, Papatoetoe, in the early hours of last September 11, planning to bug Skinner's Ford Explorer parked on the road. Mr Wilkinson and his colleague left to install the device, leaving their supervising officer as lookout.

A security light came on, flooding the front lawn with light, and the lookout used his radio to warn his colleagues of danger..

But it was too late.

Several men came out of the house, yelling at the undercover officers, who fled on foot.

The third undercover officer decided to "break his cover" before he was discovered, pretending to be "an old bloke going for a midnight walk".

A man, allegedly Skinner, challenged the officer by pointing a rifle at him and demanding that he put his hands up and cross the road to where he was standing.

"I decided that wasn't too smart a move," the officer told the court.

The man with the rifle then entered a Nissan Skyline, which accelerated down Hain Ave in the direction in which where the other two officers fled.

"After the car drove off, there was noisy radio chatter of some people in trouble. I knew Don and [name suppressed] were in distress," the senior sergeant told the court.

Under cross-examination by Clegg's lawyer Graeme Newell, he admitted he did not warn his two colleagues of the danger, saying he was " still gathering my senses".

The officer then walked back to where the trio had parked their car on Earlsworth Rd.

On the way, he walked past the fatally injured Mr Wilkinson and the other officer, who were lying against a driveway fence in a pool of blood.

"To this moment it still haunts me."

He began to drive to the emergency rendezvous point where he thought the trio would meet, but was called back to Earlsworth Rd by Detective Sergeant Greg Holmes.

Mr Holmes had found the injured pair and asked the officer to call 111.

After hearing the distressed radio communications, Mr Holmes frantically searched for the two men, making several u-turns on nearby streets before spotting them in a driveway.

"That's when I saw them lying next to a fence. Initially I thought they were hiding, his [Mr Wilkinson's] head was up against a fence, I recall seeing blood on the ground. It was at that point I knew it was serious."

Neither Skinner nor Clegg was asked to enter a plea. The hearing was adjourned until tomorrow.