Mum: I just wanted to hug my girl

Tearful mother tells court police kept her from shot child’s body

Amother has described the anguish of being unable to hug her 2-year-old daughter’s body after the toddler was shot in the head at their family home.

Amokura Daniels-Sanft died after she was shot on June 2 last year while playing in the driveway of her South Auckland home.

Her father, Gustav Otto Sanft, 26, is charged with her manslaughter and has pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a pistol, as the sawn-off shotgun was technically classified.

He has been on trial this week in the High Court at Auckland before a jury and Justice Geoffrey Venning.

The toddler’s mum, Julia Daniels, fought through tears yesterday to tell the court of her daughter’s tragic death.

Daniels said the day Amokura died she had left the home to hire a skip bin to help with the family’s move to a new house in West Auckland.

Breaking down on the witness stand, Daniels explained that her daughter wanted to join her on the journey. But she told her daughter to stay at home with her father.

After being unable to hire a skip, and stressed from the move, Daniels stopped to get something to eat.

“That’s when I got the phone call,” she said.

“All I remember is that she told me I needed to get home.” Daniels sped home. “As soon as I came to the intersection . . . I could see the fire engine and the ambulance and it just made me panic.

“I tried to get into my house but they stopped me . . . I think it was the police but I can’t remember.

“They wouldn’t let me get to my baby . . . I could hear [Sanft] crying. All I remember is I just wanted to go and hug my baby.”

She said Amokura was “daddy’s girl”. Amokura Daniels-Sanft was shot in the head while playing in her driveway.

“Amo was [Sanft’s] baby, he was just the best father to her.”

The Crown earlier told the court two children had found the gun in the hot water cupboard the previous day. However, Daniels said she wasn’t aware of her children finding the gun or that the weapon was even at the home.

But under crossexamination by defence counsel Phil Hamlin she said she was “upset” when told of the weapon’s existence and told Sanft to “get rid of it”.

Yesterday, the court also heard a distressing 111 call from Katalina Katoa, who was driving past the scene.

“I just got to the house ... I don’t think that the child is alive,” she told the operator.

“I . . . heard a big bang — I have no idea what happened.

“I don’t think the child is awake . . . I don’t think so,” she said as wailing could be heard in the background.

Katoa then handed the phone to a police officer who told the operator Amokura was dead and had suffered a fatal “skull fracture”.

The Crown alleges an “angry” Sanft shot Amokura after she was “playing up” and jumping on the couches in the driveway.

The Crown said Sanft pulled the trigger and Amokura was shot just above her left eye at “close range”, causing her skull to fracture as she suffered a “significant and unsurvivable head wound”.

Hamlin argues the gun fired accidentally, without his client having pulled the trigger, or knowing the gun was loaded.