Rau Tongia, 33, was found dead on December 20, 2020 in the Wellington suburb of Karori. Photo / Supplied
Rau Tongia, 33, was found dead on December 20, 2020 in the Wellington suburb of Karori. Photo / Supplied
Shortly before a man was fatally shot, a woman allegedly sent messages to a Facebook account saying “kill him” and “this n***** needs to go permanently”.
The Crown says that by sending the messages, the 40-year-old woman, whose name is suppressed, is a party to the murder of Rau Tongia in the Wellington suburb of Karori in 2020.
The woman denies the charge and says she can’t recall sending the messages, let alone anyone taking them seriously.
Her lawyer, Elizabeth Hall told jurors the messages are irrelevant to Tongia’s murder.
This morning, the High Court at Wellington heard Shayde Carolyn Weston and Pania Ella Waaka have already been convicted of Tongia’s murder and being a party to his murder, respectively.
Shayde Carolyn Weston was found guilty of the murder of Rau Tongia in the High Court at Wellington in August last year. Photo / Pool picture via Stuff
Opening the Crown’s case, prosecutor Tamara Jenkin told the jury earlier that fateful night, Tongia saw Weston kissing the woman, which upset him and made him angry.
Later, Weston emerged from the woman’s bedroom with facial injuries, saying Tongia attacked her while she was sleeping,
Threats were made and the police were called in the early hours, but left shortly after.
In the hours between the assault and the killing, Weston and others came back to the property armed with a knife and a hammer.
They yelled for Tongia to come out of the house. There was a fight in the street, during which Tongia was struck in the head by a member of the group who was armed with a hammer, before the group left.
Jenkin said the woman told police she was back inside the house when Tongia was struck with the hammer.
But when Tongia returned to the house, the Crown said he violently attacked the woman in the bedroom. Eventually, the fighting stopped, and the two had fallen asleep on the bed.
Pania Ella Waaka was found guilty of being a party to murder in the Wellington High Court in August last year.
Pool Picture supplied via STUFF
But Jenkin said the woman didn’t sleep - angry, she allegedly Facebook messaged Weston, saying “kill him” and “this n***** needs to go permanently”.
Jenkin said three minutes after the woman sent those messages, Weston and others left their address in downtown Wellington and headed to Karori.
The Crown says they don’t know exactly what happened in the bedroom, but Tongia was shot at close range.
Jenkin said the woman later made statements to police in which she said she’d slept through the night, unaware Tongia had been shot.
It was only in the morning, after returning from the kitchen with a glass of water, that she’d realised he was lying dead in bed, she said.
Police later received information from Facebook, which contained messages that had previously been deleted from phones police seized. These included the messages the woman is alleged to have sent.
Jenkin told the court the Crown’s case is that the woman was angry at Tongia and sent the Facebook messages. In doing so, the Crown says, she abetted, incited, or counselled Weston to commit murder.
Defence: Facebook messages had no impact
In a short opening statement to the jury, Hall rejected the Crown’s proposition, saying Weston killed Tongia without any encouragement or inducement from her client.
What happened with Weston and her client’s messages to the old Facebook account had no impact on Tongia’s murder, she said.
She said Weston was already returning to Karori with the gun, long before those messages were sent.
She explained the woman had known Tongia for about 18 years, and from time to time they would stay together. But Tongia could be unpredictable and violent, she said.
Hall said Tongia was upset when the woman kissed Weston in front of him and he’d attacked Weston, dishing out a “bad beating”.
The police arrived, but the woman defended Tongia, and they left.
Hall told the jury that from that point, everything had to do with Weston and nothing to do with her client.
She said Weston had returned to the house with her friends armed with weapons, including a hammer and a knife.
During the fight, Tongia was struck with a hammer, but her client had defended Tongia, first by trying to stop the assault and then by trying to stem the bleeding from his injuries.
But Tongia had blamed her client for the assault, she said. They fought, and she had screamed at him to get out of the house.
When they’d finally gone to bed, she’d fallen asleep. Tongia had been shot on the other side of the bed, and she hadn’t heard or seen anything, Hall said.
In the morning, before she discovered Tongia was dead, she’d stood in the kitchen and laughed about how stupid and ridiculous the night’s events had been.
The trial before Justice Paul Radich is expected to take about three weeks.
Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice.
