Colin Jack Mitchell is charged with abduction and attempted sexual violation. Photo / Pool
A jury has heard from a woman allegedly kidnapped and assaulted at a West Auckland quarry by Colin Jack Mitchell.
It is the first time her story has been shared since she was allegedly abducted by Mitchell in February last year, driven to a quarry at Riverhead and brutally assaulted.
The victim gave evidence in the High Court at Auckland this morning during Mitchell's trial on charges of abduction, wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and assault with intent to commit sexual violation.
The jury was shown a video of the victim's police interview, recorded two days after the alleged abduction.
In the video the victim has a bandage around her hand and another on her head.
In the early hours of February 26 last year the woman was walking through Grey Lynn after attending the annual Pride Parade with friends.
Mitchell allegedly abducted her and drove her 25km to the quarry and assaulted her.
The Crown alleges Mitchell intended to rape the woman.
Some time after arriving at the quarry the woman woke to find a man standing over her with a baseball bat.
She was partially clothed and injured after being hit repeatedly with a bat-like object.
After a high profile investigation and appeals for information, Mitchell was identified as the alleged attacker and charged with abduction, wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and assault with intent to commit sexual violation.
Mitchell has denied the charges and is on trial before Justice Sally Fitzgerald in the High Court at Auckland.
The court heard yesterday that the victim had been drinking with friends and had little memory of the alleged attack.
Crown Prosecutor Kirsten Lummis said it was fair to say the victim had too much to drink that night, which could have affected her memory, but being assaulted and suffering a head injury was also likely a factor.
In the video interview the victim told police that she left home at about 6pm and went to a friend's house.
There, she drank wine before the group went to Ponsonby.
They went to Chapel bar for more drinks, then after the Pride Parade finished, they crossed the road to Mexico to get dinner.
She said after that, she remembers little about the night.
Her friends filled in the blanks and told her the group left Mexico to go to a bar at Karangahape Rd.
The victim was denied entry as she was too intoxicated so she stayed outside for a while, hoping to sober up and join her friends.
But at some point her friends noticed she had left.
Soon after, the Crown alleges, while walking home, the victim crossed paths with Mitchell.
I woke up in a gravel area and I can remember feeling this side of my head was just covered in blood. I think I had my undies on but I'm not sure, I definitely didn't have my dress on. And there was a man with a mask and some kind of softball or baseball bat and I was crunched up on the ground.
The victim said she initially thought the man had an accent, but now believes his voice was muffled by the mask.
"He sounded very strange and he wanted me to turn around and I refused and I just kept begging.
"I just said 'no, I'm not, I'm not, this isn't going to happen to me'.
"I think I was saying to him 'you don't have to do this, you don't have to be this person'.
"I don't know if he said 'you are going to get yourself killed' or 'I'm going to kill you' but he was threatening me with the bat."
The attacker kept demanding the victim turn around and she refused.
"So he hit me again and I must have passed out or got knocked out," she said.
"And then I don't remember anything."
When she woke up she was "already on the move", scrambling across the gravel and on the phone to a friend.
"I apparently said that I tried to pretend to be dead or something, I just have no idea how I got away," the victim explained to police.
She had her bag and dress with her and one of her two phones.
The victim called 111.
"I had no idea where I was," she said.
"I was scared."
As she could not tell police where she was, they sent a link to her phone to help them pinpoint her coordinates.
However they still could not find her.
"My whole body was covered in blood, I thought I was dying and I was saying this on the phone. I was probably a bit dramatic, I just couldn't believe I was in shock that they couldn't find me 'cause I guess on the movies it seems like you call in and you're found," the victim said.
Eventually she came to a building and was able to give enough information about it for police to work out where she was.
"I was in the middle of nowhere, so it might have taken 15 minutes for the police to get there.
"The [111 operator] stayed on the phone the whole time.
"I think at this point I thought I was safe. I kept asking when they're coming.
"I saw some lights around the corner. I saw they were the police.
"I just remember running out and I just wanted a hug but they didn't want to touch me for DNA."
After police arrived the victim said everything "happened quite fast".
An ambulance was called and she was checked over by paramedics.
"I kept asking them to call my mum," she said.
At the hospital, blood tests, x-rays and swabs were taken.
Her fingernails were also clipped for forensic evidence.
Later in the police interview the victim was able to remember more about her attacker.
He had a white mask on, not like a burglary, like weird, like a face mask you'd buy from the $2 shop, some kind of mask with a string or something around it. Maybe there was an animal on the front of the mask… some kind of black, red, maybe yellow eyes. He was quite stocky, I wouldn't say huge, but not thin. I don't really remember what he was wearing, I know he had some kind of bat and I have an inkling that it was a baseball bat, thin at one end and thicker at the other. He kept asking me to turn around, he was standing about a metre away from me… I just knew this wasn't going to happen to me, so I just refused everything. I just kept begging and begging and begging and begging and just saying this wasn't happening… and I remember him hitting me across the face. I starting panicking, thinking 'I've got to go, I've got to have a plan.
She said she did not remember when or why her attacker left her at the quarry.
"I knew what he wanted to do to me, I knew I didn't want to let him. At first I was bawling my eyes out, begging. I just kept saying 'no, please no, please no'.
"That's when he started getting angrier.
"I just remember wanting him to realise that he didn't have to do this, so I was trying to talk him around saying 'you don't have to be this person'. It wasn't really working. He kind of got the bat out and was threatening me."
"He just kept threatening that he was going to kill me, or I was going to die if I didn't do what he wanted."
The victim said she could not remember specific details of her attacker other than he was most likely right-handed from her recollection of him striking her, that his hair was short and he had a "creepy" voice.
"I hadn't heard anyone like it in my life. [It's] hard to describe but not normal, quite deep, husky… non human… like, really violent.
"I associate it with some kind of wolf or animal."
She was not sure if the attacker's voice was distorted because of the mask or if he was using something to disguise himself.
She had little memory of the car she was taken to the quarry in and no memory of how she got inside it.
The video interview played in court served as the victim's trial evidence.
After the video was played to the jury, Lummis questioned her further.
She asked if the victim had consumed the amount of alcohol she did on the attack in the past.
The victim said she did, and conceded that she had blacked out from drinking too much on occasions other than the night of the incident.
Under cross-examination defence lawyer Jonathan Hudson quizzed the victim on what she remembered of the attack.
She confirmed she did not remember much about her night after leaving a restaurant in Ponsonby with friends.
She also confirmed that she did not know how her dress came to be torn.
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