14-year-old on trial for Flaxmere murder
A 14-year-old boy on trial for murder is alleged to have killed the victim over a torch.
Haami Hanara, who turns 15 on Christmas Day, is accused of murdering Kelly Donner, who was found mortally injured in Flaxmere.
The trial before Justice Peter Churchman at the High Court in Napier began yesterday and is expected to run over two weeks.
Donner, 40, died outside the Flax Bar and Eatery on March 4.
Crown prosecutor Steve Manning told the jury Donner bled to death because he had been stabbed in the neck with a knife, which severed his carotid artery.
Manning said the Crown alleged Hanara was holding the knife that killed Donner, and that Hanara either intended to kill Donner, or was reckless.
Either way, he was guilty of murder, Manning said.
He told the jury members they would hear no sensible reason for the death of Donner, but they would hear that the catalyst was ‘‘something as silly as an argument over a torch’’.
Donner had loaned the torch to Hanara and wanted it back, but Hanara wouldn’t give it back.
Donner was described by Manning as a quiet, harmless man, whom some described as homeless. ‘‘He was a man known to locals simply as Kelly.’’
Manning said Hanara and Donner were strangers and there was no evidence they knew each other before the night Donner was killed.
He said Hanara was one of a group of young people who had planned to break into the tavern to get alcohol.
Hanara and four friends entered an enclosed yard behind the tavern. Unknown to them, Donner was already in the yard. CCTV footage showed he was collecting cigarette butts.
Donner was asked for his torch and agreed to loan it to Hanara. When Donner wanted his torch back, Hanara wouldn’t return it. ‘‘That was the catalyst,’’ Manning said.
A beer bottle was smashed over Donner’s face, then ‘‘all hell broke loose’’ with the five young people attacking him using beer bottles and pieces of wood.
Donner armed himself with beer bottles and threw them at the group. All this happened in minutes.
Donner jumped out of the enclosed area, to an area covered by CCTV. The group advanced on him, throwing bottles, blocks of concrete and a bicycle.
Donner saw that he was in trouble and backed off. At that point Hanara entered a shadow. He came out from the shadow with a knife in his hand.
As Donner turned his back to retreat, Hanara followed him, out of CCTV footage area, Manning said. The Crown said Hanara followed Donner, jumped on him then, in quick succession stabbed him four times, twice to the left hand side of his neck, once to the chest and once to the shoulder.
Then Hanara’s accomplices joined him in kicking and stomping on Donner as he lay on the ground. Thirty-four seconds later, Hanara reappears on CCTV footage, carrying a knife with blood on it. Hanara then got on a bike, rides around for a bit, and rejoins a group of youths.
‘‘They will describe that he had a knife in his hands and that he said, words to the the effect, ‘I stabbed him’,’’ Manning said.
Witnesses would describe Donner trying to stop the bleeding from his neck but being unable to do so. He fell to the ground and bled to death.
Hanara faced one charge of murder by stabbing or cutting with a weapon and one charge of burglary.