Fatal crash footage screened in court

Thirteen seconds of iPhone footage capturing the moments leading up to a high-speed smash that killed four people have been played in a High Court manslaughter trial.

However, it is the footage that preceded and followed those 13 seconds – footage that was allegedly cropped out before that video was supplied to police – that has been the focus of attention in the trial in Hamilton.

Two Hamilton men are charged with causing the deaths of the four occupants in the Nissan Skyline – shown crashing in the video – by illegally racing against them on the night of June 24, 2016.

Dylan Cossey, 20, allegedly fled from the crash site near Hamilton Airport with Stephen John Jones,

20, in the front passenger seat. The pair face four counts each of manslaughter relating to the deaths of Hannah Leis Strickett Craze, 24, Lance Tyrone Robinson,

28, and Paul de Silva, 20, from Waipa, and Jason McCormick Ross, 19, from Taranaki, all of whom died in the crash.

The alleged race between the Honda Integra Cossey was driving, and the Skyline, reached estimated speeds of more than 150kmh. It came to a sudden end when the Nissan lost control and collided with an oncoming van about 10pm that night.

Both Cossey and Jones have also been charged with causing injury to the van’s driver and failing to stop to ascertain injury.

The van driver suffered multiple leg fractures and had to be cut from his vehicle.

Jones is also charged with one count of attempting to pervert the course of justice, related to his alleged editing of the video, removing 20 seconds of evidence before handing his phone in to police.

On Tuesday afternoon

21-year-old woman gave evidence to the court, and spoke about how, two nights after the fatal crash, Jones had showed her alleged unedited footage he took.

The woman, who has name suppression, described what she saw: The front of Cossey’s car, the other car driving on the wrong side of the road, and someone from the other car giving them the finger as they were overtaken.

‘‘You could see it lose control, swing one way, then swing another, then it goes black.’’

On the video she could hear the car’s occupants saying things like ‘‘Yeah, cool’’, as they were travelling, then someone saying the Skyline was going too fast.

Then the crash happened. The woman said what followed was some swearing, before a voice could be heard telling Cossey to ‘‘gap it’’.

Jones subsequently sent the woman a copy of the video on Facebook Messenger, along with the instruction not to show it to anyone. She did not watch the footage again, and subsequently deleted it.

‘‘When [Jones’s] phone got taken by the police he asked me to delete it, so I did.’’

During cross-examination by defence counsel Philip Morgan QC, the court was played two versions of the video, one 11 seconds long, the other 13 seconds long.

The slightly longer version showed the Skyline moving ahead of Cossey’s car, and then the crash. One of the car’s occupants could be heard yelling ‘‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’’ as it happened. The video then ends.

Another witness was Matthew Taylor, the manager of the Police Digital Forensic Unit based in Auckland, who gave evidence yesterday.

He confirmed that the video taken by Jones had originally been

38 seconds long, but the version supplied to police had been trimmed to 11 seconds.

The original full-length video was not able to be recovered.

There is also an earlier edit of the video, which was 13 seconds long.

Another video, played to the court yesterday, was the police interview with Cossey, conducted by Detective Steve Stokes on June

28.

‘‘I was in shock, my mate’s telling me to gap gap gap it,’’ he tearfully told the detective. ‘‘I panicked. I never seen anything like that in my life.’’

Why didn’t he stay or call an ambulance, the detective asked.

‘‘I didn’t want to be at the scene when their families came along.’’

Two other witnesses who gave evidence were women who were living in a house not far from the crash site.

Both spoke about how they heard the sound of the cars and saw both of them speeding northward.

‘‘They were racing cars, very loud cars,’’ the first woman said.

‘‘I could see two cars, [they] flew past ... very close to each other. I thought I heard something. I turned to my sister. Her reaction was like ‘Holy s***’.’’

The woman said she saw tail lights of one of the cars near the scene for about 10 seconds, before it sped off. ‘‘I could hear them switching through gears as they were leaving.’’

The two women then raced to the crash scene, where they called

111 and attempted to assist the injured van driver.

The court also heard from ESR scientist Helen Poulson, who examined samples from Robinson’s body. They revealed he had 129mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, well above the legal driving limit of 50mg.

Traces of methamphetamine and THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, were also detected.