A lone woman was yesterday praised for trying to help a dying robbery victim while a group of men did nothing to assist.
South Auckland businessman Shiu Prasad was fatally wounded in a knife assault as he tried to fight off the robber at his Liquor Warehouse in Mangere East on
August 29, 2000.
William Samson Holtz, aged 42, of Mangere East, is accused of robbing and murdering 54-year-old Mr Prasad.
The defence says police have got the wrong person.
In the High Court at Auckland yesterday, defence lawyer Murray Gibson commended Janine Ross for her efforts to help Mr Prasad - in contrast to a number of men who stood at a distance doing nothing.
Ms Ross told Crown prosecutor Richard Marchant that she pulled up in her ute near the Liquor Warehouse to use a money machine when she saw Mr Prasad slouched over.
"I thought he was drunk," she said.
But that impression changed when he staggered a few steps and collapsed.
When she went to him, Mr Prasad held out a cordless phone on which he had just phoned 111, but the reception was poor and Ms Ross had difficulty hearing anything.
She used her cellphone to call the emergency services again.
She said that Mr Prasad was coherent. He said there had been a "burglary", described his attacker, gave her his wife's telephone number, and asked Ms Ross to close the store for him.
During Ms Ross' testimony, Mr Prasad's wife, Satya, wept silently in the back of the court.
Ms Ross told the jury that while she waited for the emergency services, she fetched some baby clothes from her ute to try to stop bleeding to Mr Prasad's head.
Mr Prasad had also suffered repeated knife wounds to his chest and torso. He died in hospital of blood loss and shock.
Mr Gibson cross-examined Ms Ross about earlier seeing a car with a number of occupants reverse quickly out of a driveway in a nearby street.
One of the first police officers on the scene, Constable Alistar Grant, told the court that Mr Prasad asked him a number of times to tell his wife he loved her.
And to an ambulance officer, Mr Prasad said: "I am dying when I go to sleep."
