Armed police outside the property on Trig Rd, West Auckland, where Coubin Tamatoa was fatally stabbed last year. Photo / Dean Purcell
Armed police outside the property on Trig Rd, West Auckland, where Coubin Tamatoa was fatally stabbed last year. Photo / Dean Purcell
A young father said he was on a recliner chair when he pulled a knife and stabbed Coubin Tamatoa in the eye during a freak accident.
But after listening to murder-accused Isaac Allen Harnwell's version of events for more than hour, a detective revealed Tamatoa died from a chest wound.
"Well that wasn't me. And it can't be from that same knife," Harnwell responded during a police interview played to the High Court at Auckland today.
Harnwell insisted someone else must have stabbed 31-year-old Tamatoa in the chest.
He also claimed he left a trail for police, including his own discarded clothes, after the fatal Whenuapai stabbing last year.
"He mentioned leg injuries and anxiety from an assault from a year earlier," Kai Fong told jurors today.
"You were hiding in a room ... trying to get up into the roof to hide from us," Kai Fong told Harnwell in the interview on August 12 last year.
Harnwell said he was writing a letter to be read at Tamatoa's funeral after Tamatoa died at a Trig Rd property.
Murder-accused Isaac Allen Harnwell was found trying to hide in a ceiling in an Onehunga building a week after Tamatoa was killed 25km away in Whenuapai. Photo / Google
Harnwell told the detective he'd been hiding at the Trig Rd house that night, adding: "They had guns and what-not and they come down to give it to me."
Jurors heard Tamatoa was accused of stealing meth precursor ephedrine from Trig Rd, where his ex-girlfriend Ranee Rapihana lived.
Harnwell said he could hear Tamatoa and other men at the house, along with a few women, before the homicide.
He claimed the men confiscated the women's electronic devices.
"He pretty much kidnapped them ... it was ugly, it was terrifying.
"I could hear him beating up Ranee. I was pretty much stuck in the lounge for a good hour-and-a-half, maybe."
Harnwell said he heard Tamatoa demanding to know where he was - and then Tamatoa found him.
Kai Fong said she'd get Harnwell a cigarette. The recording stayed on and after a few minutes, Harnwell muttered to himself with his head in his hands.
"F***en clumsy," he said.
Members of the public including some of Tamatoa's loved ones have been attending much of the trial.
Some walked out when this part of the interview was played, and when the recording of Harnwell's depiction of the stabbing was presented.
Harnwell told Kai Fong he didn't stay longer to help Tamatoa, because he feared for his own life.
After the stabbing, Harnwell ventured through several properties on Auckland's northwest fringe until persuading a local man to give him a lift to Massey.
"I ended up going down the bank past the river and I left my shades there so youse could find my shades, just in case," he told Kai Fong.
After Kai Fong revealed the chest wound caused Tamatoa's death, Harnwell said he was being framed.
Harnwell said he had some memory problems, used meth, and was previously "chopped up" in West Auckland, when his legs, face and arms were injured.
"Mysterious things happen out West, you know what I mean?" he told the detective.
Harnwell said he was shot at shortly before the Trig Rd Stabbing.
The Crown has said Harnwell hated Tamatoa and blamed him for the shooting.
Prosecutors also said that even if Tamatoa behaved badly on his last night alive, he did not deserve to die, and Harnwell had plenty of chances to leave before stabbing him.
The defence has said Harnwell was acting either in self-defence or to defend Rapihana.
