The confrontation started over fireworks.
A neighbourly dispute over fireworks on Guy Fawkes night turned explosive when a Lower Hutt resident shot another man in the shoulder in front of his children, a jury has heard.
Tuhi Isaac Alexander is accused of bringing a gun and tomahawk to confront his neighbour’s guests about the fireworks, but told police someone else brought the gun and said the complainant was shot during a struggle over the weapon.
Alexander, 38, is on trial in the Wellington District Court, having pleaded not guilty to wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. He also denied charges of common assault, possession of an offensive weapon, and unlawful possession of a firearm.
Crown prosecutor Lee van der Lem told the jury in his opening address yesterday the incident happened on Judd Crescent, Lower Hutt, on Guy Fawkes night 2022, which was on a Saturday that year.
Alexander’s neighbour was hosting a gathering and children, including the complainant’s teenagers, were letting off fireworks outside the front of the home, van der Lem said.
Complainant Leonard Murray gave evidence yesterday, saying he and other adults were supervising while the children let off fireworks on the roadside.
At one point a car pulled over and the driver “had words” with Murray’s sister’s partner, who Murray knew as “Swiper”. He said based on body language, the conversation did not look “friendly”, but the car moved on and parked at a house down the road.
Sometime later, he saw Alexander coming down the road from where the car had parked with a “little kid” he believed was his daughter and began having a confrontation with Swiper.
“I don’t know what was said and how everything started,” Murray said.
“I turned around and reacted the way anyone would, I would suggest anyway if someone was to whack your family member.
“I’m not gonna lie, I threw punches and kicks. I own that, I put my hand up.”
Once he felt it was a fair fight, he left Swiper to “clean up his own mess”, but said he returned to the melee when he heard mention of a weapon.
“Swiper had already gotten the other guy, like he had pretty much, like, wrapped him up in the sense where they were still scuffling. It looked like they were wrestling, if anything,” he said.
“I ran over in hopes of trying to help him diffuse the situation . . . All I seen was, like, a spark, if anything. Like if you were to let off a Guy Fawke and the flash that happened, that’s all I seen.
“I thought it was just a firecracker at first, but then I felt, like, a sensation, almost like a heated sensation, like my body was heating up in one area,” he said, gesturing to his armpit.
“I panicked, I tried to get that weapon before he could use it again on anyone else.”
Murray said he took Alexander to the ground with a knee over his chest, wrestled the gun off him and threw it out of reach.
“He was pleading something about his daughter. He kept saying it a few times. I remember telling him ‘you just effing shot me’.”
Eventually, he let Alexander up to go find his daughter, who had been taken into a nearby house by another adult.
Murray then drove himself to Wellington Hospital and was immediately taken into the Emergency Department. The bullet stayed in his shoulder for a week until he was able to have surgery, he said.
Van der Lem said police arrived at the scene and set up a cordon, which Alexander fled by driving on the footpath. He surrendered himself to police a few days later. He told police he did not bring the gun and that Murray was shot accidentally.
Defence lawyer Steve Gill began his cross examination by suggesting Murray was the one who had fired the weapon.
“Mr Murray, you’ve accidentally shot yourself with the gun that you had during the scuffle, didn’t you?” Gill suggested.
“That’s incorrect,” replied Murray.
Gill suggested more than once that the gun was actually Murray’s and he had shot himself with it, which Murray denied.
Gill questioned him about the lighting on the night and the clothing Alexander was wearing.
“I wasn’t trying to get a good look at the guy’s clothing,” Murray said. “I was trying to, at that time, fight for my survival and my loved ones’.”
Gill asked if Murray was Mongrel Mob-affiliated, to which Murray said he himself was not, but that he had family members who were.
“So this guy shot you, but why didn’t you deck him? Why didn’t you get some retribution?” Gill asked.
“Because I had already disarmed him, he was already screaming for his daughter. I thought the honest thing to do or the most fatherly thing to do was to let that fella get up and go tend to his child like I was trying to do to mine,” Murray said.
The trial, before a jury of four men and eight women, is set to last for several days.
Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.