Accused drugs robber cleared

A man accused of shooting a drug dealer at a tinny house raid gone wrong has been acquitted.

Two men burst into a Christchurch house to rob it on December 29, 2016, and accidentally shot a dealer in the neck with a sawn-off shotgun.

One of the robbers has never been identified. The Crown alleged the other was Rory Manuel – a charge he denied.

Manuel, 36, was cleared by the jury yesterday at the end of the three-day Christchurch District Court trial.

He was sentenced to nine years’ jail after being convicted at the first trial in July 2018, but a retrial was ordered by the Court of Appeal. He again denied the charge of causing grievous bodily harm in the course of an armed robbery.

The Crown case was that the shotgun went off accidentally as the intruders searched the property and moved a sofa.

At the trial, the jury asked why the man who had been shot was not giving evidence and were told the man was aware of the trial but was unwilling to take part in the court process.

Prosecutor Sean Mallett said Manuel had been picked out of a photo montage, but acknowledged the witnesses said they were not ‘‘100 per cent’’ sure.

He said a necklace similar to one from the robbery scene had been found at Manuel’s address, his fingerprint was found on a box in a bedroom at the scene, and cellphone data placed him in the area at the time.

Defence counsel Andrew Bailey called each strand of the Crown case into question in his closing address.

The jury retired for 100 minutes before delivering its not guilty verdict.

‘‘If push had come to shove (at a judge-alone trial), I would probably have come to the same conclusion myself,’’ Judge Raoul Neave said.