Severed armpit artery worst injury
A 19-year-old man who was stabbed 14 times died from hypervolemic shock after a major artery was severed in his left armpit, a jury at the High Court in Invercargill has heard.
Jack McAllister died on June 8, 2017 after he was attacked near an Invercargill stadium at about 11pm the day before. Five people are on trial accused of his murder while two others have admitted the charge.
Crown prosecutor Mary-Jane Thomas read to the jury, as part of ‘‘the admission of facts’’, forensic pathologist Dr Martin Sage’s autopsy report.yesterday.
Stab wounds were found in parts of McAllister’s body including back, chest, hip, shoulder, arm. Three wounds were trivial. Nine were similar in appearance, caused by a knife with a single cutting edge.
The wound in McAllister’s left shoulder caused the most damage, severing a major artery in the left armpit.
Sage concluded McAllister died as a result of physiological hypervolemic shock which resulted from blood loss.
In other evidence, Crown witness Detective Jeremy Dix told the court he waited outside defendant Natasha Ruffell’s house on Ettrick St, arriving about 6am on June 8.
He saw two people leave the house at about 7.10am. He followed them to an address on John St where defendant David Wilson got out of the vehicle.
Wilson and Ruffell, who was driving, were subsequently taken to the Invercargill police station for questioning.
A video recording of Ruffell’s first interview with police on June 8 was played to the court.
She told the interviewing officer, Detective Constable Melanie Robertson, she had no idea why she had been stopped by police until Robertson had told her that morning.
‘‘I had no idea what was going on. No one would tell me anything.’’
Ruffell told Robertson she had gone to bed about 11pm on June 7.
There were people a bedroom but she had ‘‘no idea’’ what they were doing.
‘‘Sorry I don’t know (what they were doing). I’m a heavy sleeper.’’
She had been asleep for about two or three hours ‘‘maybe’’ when she was woken because Christopher Brown, another defendant, needed to go to hospital, she said.
‘‘We managed to get Farmer Brown to stay in the recovery position on the couch . . . he was shaking, he had a temperature, he was flushed, he had not been eating or drinking properly that day.’’
She told the officer Brown had been hit behind the ear at a party at her house on the Saturday night when the party got ‘‘ridiculously large’’.
After Brown was taken away by ambulance, Ruffell went inside and went back to bed, she said.
She had been in bed for about five minutes when she got a text from the 17-year-old, who has suppression and already pleaded guilty, asking for her to get picked up from the Invercargill Police Station.
Ruffell said didn’t ask any questions or what she was doing at the police station, just where she wanted to go.
When Ruffell was told her vehicle was used in the assault against McAllister and asked what she knew about it, she told Robertson ‘‘nothing’’.
‘‘I don’t know, I was sleeping’’. During the interview she admitted receiving a text from a friend telling her McAllister had been stabbed but said she did not pay attention as she thought it was made up.
The text had initially ‘‘escaped her thoughts’’, she said.