‘Tiki tour’ for kidnapped driver

set fire to the driver’s seat.

A jury at the High Court in Wellington has heard that fellow Kiwi Cabs drivers were the first on the scene after Shemon got out of the boot and pushed the panic alarm in the vehicle, sending his position to the company’s call centre and other taxis.

The jury was told that Bronson Boudine Samson, 24, had pleaded guilty to offences including kidnapping, wounding, robbery and arson. But Jade Richard Barton, 25, pleaded not guilty and his trial was continuing.

Evidence collected from the taxi’s security camera, global positioning system (GPS) tracking device and several traffic cameras in Wellington was presented to the jury yesterday, on the fourth day of Barton’s trial.

The incident began just after 2.40am on August 9, 2017, when Shemon was in his taxi in an industrial area at the bottom of the Ngauranga Gorge. He left the vehicle, and some four minutes later Samson got in and took down the taxi’s security camera.

The Crown alleges that Barton was in a van that sometimes travelled with the taxi over the next two hours as it was driven to Lower Hutt, Porirua East, Elsdon, Newlands, Broadmeadows, Khandallah, Johnsonville and Churton Park before ending in Grenada.

When police spoke with Barton, he said Samson had gone on a ‘‘tiki tour’’. Barton said he had needed money but had not done anything to the taxi driver.

Shemon said he had heard the voices of at least two people in his taxi when he was in the boot, but Detective Ben Evans said police had been unable to establish that anyone else had been in the car.

However, there was a second vehicle present at the start, sometimes during, and the end of the trip.

Shemon had been violently beaten and knocked unconscious. English was not his first language, so his belief about what he heard had to be taken in that context, Evans said.