‘I’m here to tell the truth’
A woman who has previously pleaded guilty to the murder of Invercargill man Jack McAllister ‘‘lied about a lot of stuff’’, but now insists she’s telling the truth.
The 17-year-old woman, whose name has been suppressed, admitted to lying to police but told the High Court at Invercargill yesterday that she was truthfully recounting the events leading up to the 19-yearold’s death. ‘‘I was protecting people I thought were my friends,’’ she said.
‘‘I didn’t tell the police a lot of things. I lied about a lot of things but I’ve changed my mind and I’m here to tell the truth.’’
Her testimony included an account contested by defence lawyers that the five people on trial – Natasha Ruffell, Christopher Brown, Laura Scheepers, David Wilson, and a 24-year-old woman with name suppression – saw a sixth, Brayden WhitingRoff, ‘‘shadowboxing’’ with a knife an hour before McAllister was assaulted.
She and Whiting-Roff have already pleaded guilty to murder. None of the defendants are accused of physically causing McAllister’s death, but are alleged to have arranged, encouraged or otherwise been party to his fatal stabbing at Stadium Southland on June 7 last year.
In a recorded interview with police, the then-16-year-old girl said: ‘‘I didn’t even know he was going to get stabbed until he [Whiting-Roff] actually done it [sic].’’ She then said she ‘‘didn’t care what happened’’ to McAllister.
She reiterated her comments to police in a diary she kept after her arrest.
‘‘Brayden said he was going to stab him but we thought it was all s..t,’’ one entry said.
The 17-year-old held back tears
‘‘I was protecting people I thought were my friends. I didn’t tell the police a lot of things.’’
The 17-year-old woman who has name suppression
as she told the court McAllister had sexually assaulted her two months before his fatal stabbing.
She said the assault happened in the back of a truck at Sandy Point on March 8, 2017.
She also told the court she received a phone call from McAllister’s step-mother, Debra Fraser, on the day of his murder.
Fraser had alleged the woman lied about the sexual assault, and threatened to tell police she had breached her bail conditions at the time, the court head.
It left the 17-year-old ‘‘angry and upset’’. ‘‘I didn’t want to get in trouble with the police,’’ she said.
As a result of these events, she ‘‘wanted to be involved’’ in plans to assault McAllister, the court heard. ‘‘I wanted to give him the bash . . . I didn’t like him or the family,’’ she said.
Video footage shown in court showed two of the defendants may not have been present when Whiting-Roff brandished the murder weapon.
CCTV at Invercargill Countdown showed Ruffell and the 24-year-old defendant at the supermarket at about 10.15pm on the night of McAllister’s murder.
The 17-year-old told the court that all the defendants were at an Ettrick St address, where Whiting-Roff showed them the knife, for about an hour before the murder.
Hugo Young, who is representing the 24-year-old, said it was ‘‘impossible for [suppressed] to be in two places at the same time’’.
Young told the court the 24-yearold and 17-year-old were not friends. The pair had stolen from each other in the past, and in a text to her mother the day after the murder, the 17-year-old described his client as a ‘‘dumb bitch,’’ Young said.
The 17-year-old told the court that the other woman took a small ‘‘tomato cutting’’ knife to the murder, which Young said was not mentioned in her statement to police. ‘‘You cooked up a story,’’ he alleged. She responded that they had a ‘‘very up an down’’ relationship.
She maintained she was being truthful, and that she remembered the woman being at Ettrick St.