Defendants not in on any knifing plans, court told
David Wilson had never been part of the inner circle central to a fatal group confrontation with Jack McAllister, a High Court jury was told in Invercargill yesterday.
Neither he nor Natasha Ruffell, who had stayed behind but lent her car to the others to drive from Ettrick St to the Surrey Park scene of 19-year-old McAllister’s stabbing, were part of the planning process, their lawyers told the jury in the last day of defence submissions.
Brayden Whiting-Roff and a female teen with name suppression have pleaded guilty to McAllister’s murder.
Five others – Wilson,19, Ruffell, 28, Christopher Brown, 20, Laura Scheepers, 19, and a 24-year-old woman with name suppression – now face murder charges on the grounds that they helped a common purpose of inflicting life-threatening violence.
Wilson’s lawyer Bill Dawkins said the Crown had produced no evidence Wilson was one of the people it had said were ‘‘out to get’’ McAllister since well before the June 7 assault last year.
Dawkins outlined testimony and digital communications that placed Wilson at Ettrick St no earlier than 10.44pm that night by which time ‘‘the bravado with Brayden Whiting-Roff waving around a knife had long since finished’’.
Wilson, not knowing all that had happened at Ettrick St, had driven the overloaded carload from to Surrey Park but when he and the 24-year-old defendant had started to walk down the driveway off Isabella St they were both turned back. ‘‘Their presence, let alone assistance, wasn’t required because they were never part of what ….was planned.’’ Dawkins said.
Though the other defendants were not his clients, the jury may conclude any plans they had were for much less than a lifethreatening assault: ‘‘But David Whiting-Roff had something much more sinister in mind and (the teenaged girl who also admitted murder) couldn’t help herself’’.
Ruffell’s lawyer Tim Fournier told the jury it had been given no evidence that she had taken part in discussions formulating the plan. She lived at Ettrick St with her two children, the 24-year-old woman and Christopher Brown. Although in and out of the room where the others had been talking, Ruffell’s own attentions that night had been focussed on errands transporting people, and the domestic concerns of being ‘‘an active mum’’.
Justice Rachel Dunningham is due to sum up today.