Victim caught near-severed arm

A woman attacked with a samurai sword told a court yesterday she caught her near-severed left arm and hand with her right hand which was also sliced in the attack.

Simonne Butler, whom Antonie Ronnie Dixon is accused of attempting to murder at her Pipiroa home on January 21, yesterday detailed the wounds she received.

She was giving evidence on the fifth day of a depositions hearing to a packed small courtroom in the Manukau District Court before Justices of the Peace Colin Davis and Mark Sinclair.

Miss Butler gesticulated with both arms while in the witness stand but her left forearm was contained in a kind of brace. She moved her scarred right hand freely.

She told Richard Marchant, prosecuting, that Dixon used a samurai sword that had been in her home for years. "It was an ornament. It was not even sharp. It was just there."

She said that at the time there was lots of screaming and lots of blood. Her friend Renee Gunbie, whom Dixon is also accused of attempting to murder, lost a hand as a result of the attack.

Miss Butler said her injuries included the "vertical" slicing of her right hand and the slashing of her right arm. Her left arm was chopped off apart from what she called a tiny bridge of skin. She also suffered slashes to her shoulder and neck.

She told Mr Marchant that Dixon had "flipped" when asked how she got the injuries.

"I remember lying on the floor and looking at the bed and thinking how comfortable it looked. I don't remember getting there but apparently I did," she said of the aftermath of the attack.

Earlier, she told Mr Marchant she never used drugs. She said Dixon and Renee Gunbie seemed to get on really well.

In the period leading up to the attack he thought he was being followed, she said. She admitted an "intimate indiscretion" with someone who had been a police officer a few years ago.

She told of arriving at her Pipiroa home in a little car of hers early in the evening of January 21 with a man whose name has been suppressed by the court. Dixon was there with Renee Gunbie who was buried in blankets on a bed. When she got up Miss Butler said she noticed some blood on her forehead.

Dixon appeared fine and then a couple of minutes "or seconds" later he started yelling at Renee.

"I didn't understand what was going on ... He was off the planet."

Dixon was telling Renee Gunbie to say what she had been saying about Miss Butler that day.

"She was a little bit scared. She kept asking me if she was going to die. I said, 'Of course you're not honey. Why would you think that?'" Miss Butler said. She said Dixon was really loud.

"I remember just not knowing what was happening. It was just a big mess ... There was blood everywhere ... and then it was quiet."

She said the next thing she could remember before the arrival of a rescue helicopter was Dixon's voice again screaming for a phone.

Under cross-examination by Barry Hart, for Dixon, she said she and Dixon were friends after a relationship went wrong.

Mr Hart: "He looked out for you and you looked out for him?"

Miss Butler: "In a sense, yes."

The hearing is expected to end today.