Violent events in lead up to death

A witness has described the yelling, splashing and violence which took place in the period leading up to the death of Ashburton man Arran Gairns.

Ashburton man Kooly Managki Te Tomo, 28, is on trial for the manslaughter of Gairns, whose body was found in an Ashburton ditch on June 1, 2014.

In his opening address, at the Timaru High Court on Monday, Crown Prosecutor Andrew McRae told the jury Te Tomo had planned to steal methamphetamine from Gairns.

McRae said Te Tomo and two other men had carried out the robbery, which included threatening Gairns with a machete, before ultimately chasing him to the ditch where he drowned.

On the second day of the trial, a male witness told the court how Gairns was targeted, chased and threatened with being locked in a car boot and taken for a ride.

The witness told the court how he drove Te Tomo and Desmond Kapi Marshall to Pierson’s Bus depot on West St, Ashburton, where Gairns was waiting.

The men arrived at the depot, got out of the car and then ‘‘dispersed’’.

‘‘I heard yelling so I started to run .. that’s when I seen [sic] someone running into the bushes ... something was happening, something was wrong ... I started to run towards the sound,’’ he said.

‘‘I could see Kooly running into the bushes, someone else was ahead of him, and I heard a splash as someone jumped into the water.’’

‘‘Someone came out of the water, it was AJ [Gairns] saying, ‘I have got nothing’. Des [Marshall] has ended up on top of AJ with the machete, saying ‘where are the fucking drugs?’,’’ he said.

‘‘He was given a chance to stand back up, and Des hit him with a right hand. AJ rolled back down into the creek.’’

Te Tomo then confronted Gairns, asking him ‘where are the f*****g drugs?’, he said

Kooly then suggested it might be time for Gairns to get into the boot of the vehicle, he said.

‘‘To try and scare him. He signalled he’s going to put him into the boot, that’s when AJ has run. Everyone stopped still for about five seconds or so, Kooly ran off after him’’, the witness told the court.

He then described how the three men unsuccessfully searched the area around the depot for Gairns, before they got back into his car and returned to the house of their mutual friend, Stacey Leigh Curtis.

A female associate of Te Tomo, who also gave evidence for the Crown, said in the days leading up to June 1 she returned to Ashburton from Wellington to collect some of her belongings.

She told the court that the night before Gairns’ death, he had contacted her to arrange selling drugs. She said she had done a lot of drug deals with him in the past.

When McRae put it to the witness that text evidence showed she had used a van belonging to Curtis to collect Gairns and take him to the Pierson’s Bus Depot, on the same night he contacted her regarding selling of the drugs, she agreed.

She said the pair discussed bagging and selling the methamphetamine Gairns had in his possession, and said they had planned to split the profits between them.

She said she then dropped Gairns at his house and went to Curtis’ house to divide the drugs into 0.1gram amounts.

While she was at the house, Te Tomo came out to the car to talk to her, however she could remember ‘‘nothing at all’’ of what they had discussed, she said.

Once the drugs were bagged up, the witness said she went back to collect Gairns and drove him back to the depot.

The trial continues on Wednesday.