Jury hears story of quarry ordeal
Police interview with woman who says she was kidnapped and sexually assaulted played in High Court trial
Acrime and justice jury has heard testimony from a woman allegedly kidnapped and assaulted at a West Auckland quarry by Colin Jack Mitchell.
It is the first time her story has been shared since she was allegedly abducted by Mitchell in February last year, driven to a quarry at Riverhead and brutally assaulted.
The victim gave evidence in the High Court at Auckland yesterday morning during Mitchell’s trial on charges of abduction, wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and assault with intent to commit sexual violation.
The jury was shown a video of the victim’s police interview, recorded two days after the alleged offending.
She had been socialising with friends in Ponsonby and was walking home intoxicated when Mitchell allegedly kidnapped her and drove her 25km to the quarry.
She has little memory of the alleged incident, but told police in a recorded interview that she woke in the quarry to find a man standing over her with a baseball bat.
She was partially clothed and bleeding from the head.
“I woke up in a gravel area and I can remember feeling this side of my head was just covered in blood,” she told police in her interview, which was played to the jury yesterday.
“I think I had my undies on but I’m not sure, I definitely didn’t have my dress on.
“And there was a man with a mask and some kind of softball or baseball bat and I was crunched up on the ground. I just said, ‘No, I’m not, I’m not, this isn’t going to happen to me.’
“I think I was saying to him, ‘You don’t have to do this, you don’t have to be this person.’
“I don’t know if he said ‘you are going to get yourself killed’ or ‘ I’m going to kill you’ but he was threatening me with the bat.”
The attacker kept demanding that she turn around and she refused.
“So he hit me again and I must have passed out or got knocked out,” she said. “And then I don’t remember anything.”
When she woke up she was “already on the move”.
She was on her phone to a friend, scrambling across the gravel.
“I apparently said that I tried to pretend to be dead or something, I just have no idea how I got away,” the victim explained to police.
She had her bag and dress with her and one of her two phones. The victim called 111. “I had no idea where I was,” she said. “I was scared.”
As she could not tell police where she was, they sent a link to her phone to help pinpoint her co-ordinates.
However they still could not find her.
“My whole body was covered in blood, I thought I was dying and so I was saying this on the phone, I was probably a bit dramatic, I just couldn’t believe I was in shock that they couldn’t find me ’cause I guess on the movies it seems like you call in and you’re found,” the victim said.
Eventually she came to a building and was able to give enough information about it for police to work out where she was.
“I was in the middle of nowhere, so it might have taken 15 minutes for the police to get there,” she recalled.
“I saw some lights around the corner . . . saw they were the police.
“I just remember running out and I just wanted a hug but . . . they didn’t want to touch me for DNA.”
Later in the police interview she was able to remember more about the attack.
“I starting panicking, thinking ‘ I’ve got to go, I’ve got to have a plan’,” she said. “I knew what he wanted to do to me, I knew I didn’t want to let him . . . at first I was bawling my eyes out, begging . . . I just kept saying, ‘ No, please no, please no.’
“That’s when he started getting angrier.
“He just kept threatening that he was going to kill me, or I was going to die if I didn’t do what he wanted.” The trial continues today.