Robber accidentally shot drug dealer during raid
Two men burst into a Christchurch tinny house to rob it and accidentally shot a dealer in the neck with a sawn-off shotgun.
Rory Manuel, 36, denies being the armed robber who burst into the Bryndwr house before 3am on December 29, 2016.
His three or four day Christchurch District Court trial began before Judge Raoul Neave yesterday, with the Crown telling the jury it planned to call evidence from 16 witnesses. Manuel denies being the robber wearing blue and holding the sawn-off shotgun – one of two men who burst into the property – but the Crown says there is evidence that can convict him.
Andrew Bailey and Abbie Hollingworth appear as defence counsel for Manuel, and Sean Mallett is prosecuting for the Crown.
Mallett said the two men at the house had been selling cannabis during the previous evening. A woman was also present. The three had then smoked methamphetamine. They were all up and watching a movie on television when the robbers burst in.
The intruders made the two men lie face down and put a blanket over the woman’s head. They told her they would shoot her if she did not stop screaming. After demanding to be told where the money, drugs, and valuables were, the robbers loaded items into a suitcase they found. They took car keys and a watch and wallet from one of the men and were then moving a sofa to search under it, when the gun accidentally went off.
One of the men was hit in the neck and shoulder at close range with a blast from what was believed to be a sawn-off shotgun. The robbers left in the car of one of the victims, and it was later found abandoned and burnt out.
Mallett said four pieces of evidence would point to Manuel being the robber in blue. The one wearing red has never been identified. Manuel’s fingerprint was found on an empty Vodafone box in a bedroom at the robbery scene, and the woman victim identified him when she was shown a photo montage. When police searched his home in Shirley, they found a necklace identified as one taken in the robbery.
His cellphone was used to send a text message and make a phone call through a cell-tower in the area of the robbery around the time of the robbery. This was at odds with the explanation he gave police about where he was. .