Teina Williams is on trial in the High Court at Rotorua charged with murder. Photo / Kelly Makiha
Hours after killing a rival gang member, a Mongrel Mob boss asked a woman who helped him get away “do I need to worry about where your loyalties lie?”, the High Court at Rotorua has heard.
Key Crown witness Te Awatea Tawa has told a jury initially her loyalty did lie with murder-accused Teina Williams and she was prepared to tell the police “bullshit”.
“But it’s been three years and I’ve had time to think about that and I’ve had heaps of hidings given to me too, so here I am.”
Tawa is giving evidence for the Crown in the murder trial of Williams - a 34-year-old Taupō Mongrel Mob president.
Williams is accused of shooting dead Black Power member Ryan Woodford in the Adelphi Motel at 6.25am on March 6, 2022 at point-blank range in front of Woodford’s partner and children.
It is the Crown case Williams drove to the motel with Marty Durham - the Taupō Mongrel Mob’s second in command - in the passenger seat.
The Crown said Williams knocked on the door of Woodford’s unit while holding a gun with a Mangu Kaha gang patch draped over the top.
When Woodford answered, Williams fired one shot, in an execution-style killing, the Crown said.
Durham pleaded guilty to manslaughter before the trial started last week.
The Crown’s alleges Woodford was killed in an act of retaliation after Black Power and Mongrel Mob gang tensions in Taupō.
At the time, Williams was remanded to the Grace Foundation drug rehabilitation facility in Auckland with an electronically monitored ankle bracelet.
The jury has heard evidence that the bracelet went offline for about 12 hours around the time of the shooting. Williams is accused of “foiling” his bracelet - putting tinfoil around it to stop the GPS monitoring from working.
The Crown has produced CCTV footage showing Williams in Te Awamutu with tinfoil around his ankle in the hours after the shooting.
Tawa began giving evidence on Tuesday but didn’t take the stand on Wednesday due to illness.
In her evidence on Tuesday and yesterday, she outlined the methamphetamine-fuelled days leading up to Woodford’s shooting, saying she had been awake for seven to eight days.
She said she was travelling with Williams but wasn’t aware what he had done. She figured it out when she was messaged by a friend saying Woodford had been shot dead.
She told Crown Solicitor Amanda Gordon how she paid for fuel at petrol stations to avoid Williams being seen on CCTV footage.
She also spoke about helping to tilt a CCTV camera upwards on a Waikato state highway to avoid Williams being seen.
When asked by Gordon how she knew Williams, she said she was introduced to him by his sister, who was her cellmate in prison.
Williams and Tawa began exchanging letters and phone calls, which eventually led to Tawa visiting him at the Grace Foundation on March 1, 2022. She said it was Williams’ birthday and they smoked methamphetamine together in his room and hung out.
She saw him again two days later on Tawa’s birthday. She said Williams gave her a car as a present - a blue Holden. It was the same car she said Williams would later drive to the Adelphi Motel to shoot Woodford.
Tawa, Williams and others travelled in a convoy of three cars to Taupō on the morning of March 5.
Tawa told the jury she was aware of tensions in Taupō between Mongrel Mob and Black Power. She said Williams had a meeting in the early hours of March 5 with “his dogs”, meaning Mongrel Mob members, at a house in Taupō.
After everyone left the house, Tawa and another woman, Dana Mihinui, who is also a Crown witness, were told to wait in a car near the Aratiatia Dam. She said Williams told her “he had to go and take care of something”.
It was a nervous wait for the two women, she said.
“F*** I had heaps of puffs [of methamphetamine]. I just puffed, and puffed, and puffed. I was so tired. I had been up for nearly seven days. My skin was crawling and I knew something was wrong.”
She said just as she decided to drive away, she nearly hit Williams speeding the other way.
She said Durham was in Williams’ passenger seat. Williams told her to follow him and keep up.
“I just thought they had de-patched someone and had had a fight. I didn’t know what they had just done.”
Tawa said in the hours after the shooting, she was in a car with Williams - still unaware of what exactly had happened.
“I felt different. He was different. He was stressed out ... He asked me a few questions like ‘Do I need to worry about where your loyalty lies?’ and he asked me if I was okay and how I was feeling.”
Gordon asked Tawa why Williams asked her if he needed to worry about her loyalty.
Tawa said: “I know now that he was asking me where my loyalty lies so I didn’t end up here [in the witness box]”.
Gordon asked Tawa if in March 2022, she had friends in both Black Power and Mongrel Mob.
“Yeah, I had just lost a baby to a Black Power member. I buried my son in December 2021.”
She said her Black Power boyfriend was in prison at the time of the shooting.
She said she lied to the police the first few times she was interviewed but she changed her mind and told the truth.
She said this was because police already had evidence against Williams.
Another reason she changed her statement was that her grandmother died two days after Woodford was shot, and she didn’t want to be in prison for her tangi.
She said her truthful statement was the one Gordon was holding in her hand.
Under cross-examination from one of Williams’ lawyers, Melissa James, Tawa said a lot was happening at that time.
“I just buried my son, he [Williams] shot Ryan, my nan died. You could say I had a lot going on.”
The trial is expected to last five weeks and is before Justice Michele Wilkinson-Smith.
Kelly Makiha is a senior journalist who has reported for the Rotorua Daily Post for more than 25 years, covering mainly police, court, human interest and social issues.