Witness claims stabbing victim committed sex assault

An Invercargill man had sexually assaulted one of his killers two months before he was fatally stabbed, a court has heard.

A 17-year-old woman, whose name has been suppressed, held back tears as she said that Jack McAllister sexually assaulted her in the back of a truck at Sandy Point on the night of March 8, 2017.

She told the High Court at Invercargill that she ‘‘wanted to be involved’’ in plans to assault McAllister. ‘‘I wanted to give him the bash . . . I didn’t like him or the family,’’ she said.

She and another man, Brayden Whiting-Roff, have already pleaded guilty to murder charges. Five others – Natasha Ruffell, Christopher Brown, Laura Scheepers, David Wilson, and a 24-year-old woman with name suppression – are on trial for 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 the stabbing at Stadium Southland on June 7 last year.

The 17-year-old said she had received a phone call from McAllister’s stepmother, Debra Fraser, that same day.

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.

She told the court that Whiting-Roff and Brown, one of the defendants, were ‘‘amped up’’ before the stabbing.

He was wearing a balaclava, ‘‘scrunched up, acting staunch’’ and planning to meet with McAllister, she said.

LURED TO THE STADIUM Last week the court heard that McAllister was lured to the stadium with the promise of sex by one of the four murderaccused on trial. Instead, he was stabbed 14 times and beaten.

On Friday, Laura Scheepers’ lawyer Peter Redpath told the court that she was party to an agreement to assault McAllister, but not to murder him.

‘‘Laura Scheepers was only a party to the Subway agreement, which was a limited assault. She did not perceive murder as a probable consequence of what she agreed to.’’

The court heard she had lured McAllister to Stadium Southland with the promise of sex.

Redpath said that his client was wrong to have done that – but she was not a murderer.

‘‘The defence case is she is not a murderer and more particularly she was not party to the murder committed by WhitingRoff that night.’’

Scheepers had been party to a discussion and agreement at Subway about an ‘‘assault only’’ and there was no discussion about knives or weapons, Redpath said.

He added that there was a later meeting between others, at Ettrick St, but she was not there and she was not told what was said at that meeting.

The Ettrick St agreement had gone well beyond anything agreed to by Scheepers and well beyond anything she had knowledge of, Redpath said.

Conditions she had placed on her involvement were ‘‘no knives, no serious harm’’.