Richards denies being there at all, while Haenga admits he was in the car and admits shooting at Gage, but claims he didn’t mean to kill him.
Defence lawyer Scott Jefferson partly quoted his client’s words in his closing address in the High Court at Palmerston North this morning when he said: “Ladies and gentlemen, it was a f***ing sh*tshow that shouldn’t have happened, but it wasn’t Royden Haenga’s sh*tshow.”
During a police interview, Haenga had described the situation on August 6 in those words.
Later in that same interview, Haenga claimed he was “… just trying to intimidate him, not kill the c*nt”.
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“Who plans or who wants a sh*tshow? No one does,” Jefferson put to the jury this morning.
Hori Gage, 27, was fatally shot in front of his family in Palmerston North on August 6. Photo / NZ Police
“This is the whole point of Mr Haenga’s case.”
Jefferson said Haenga didn’t plan the murder, and the person in the back seat of the car acted alone and unscripted.
The Crown alleges Richards was the man in the back seat and that he got out, advanced on Gage and shot him five times while he sat in his car with his family.
A third man in the car, who was driving, Neihana Cunningham, has already pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and Jefferson said that whoever the back seat passenger was, he was primarily to blame.
“There is a huge distinction between what Neihana Cunningham and Royden Haenga did and what the guy in the back seat did,” Jefferson said, noting that Haenga had been shooting low, not trying to hit Gage.
“What the person in the back seat did to Mr Gage was an execution, but it was an entirely unscripted and unassisted act from Mr Haenga’s point of view.”
Backseat Passenger
Following a violent depatching and stabbing of a local Black Power president on August 4, the Crown says a national call to arms went out to other chapters of the gang.
The Crown says Richards travelled from Hawke’s Bay with other Black Power associates in response to that call to arms and got into a car with Haenga, looking for someone from the Mongrel Mob as a target.
Richards’ lawyer, William Hawkins, centred his closing address on the credibility of what he described as “self-interested” Crown witnesses.
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“Only one person formally identifies him as the shooter,” Hawkins said, referring to a sole witness who was granted name suppression at the trial.
Hawkins centred on this witness’ first interview with police, in which he lies about his involvement in terms of driving Haenga out to a Black Power address known as “The Farm”, and then leaving with him and another man whom he later identified from a police montage as being Richards.
Hawkins accused the witness of wanting to “have his cake and eat it too” by claiming he wasn’t in the car, but was also able to identify Richards.
Hawkins also suggested that the witness was in the car when Gage was shot.
Robert Richards denies being there at all on the day Gage was killed. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson
Also under fire in Hawkins’ closing address was Cunningham, whom he said was perilously close to sitting in the dock next to Richards and Haenga as an accessory to murder.
“But he had a change of heart,” Hawkins said, referring to Cunningham’s decision to plead guilty to manslaughter for his role as the getaway driver of the car after Gage was shot.
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Hawkins said Cunningham was doing everything he could to reduce his sentence, including giving evidence against Richards and Haenga at the “11th hour” before the trial.
Finally, Hawkins said that while there was CCTV that placed Richards around Palmerston North leading up to the murder, there was none that placed him at The Farm, nor any cellphone polling data.
‘Cold Blooded’
Crown prosecutor Guy Carter summarised several weeks of Crown evidence for the jury on Tuesday, including police surveillance, phone polling data, and testimony from multiple witnesses.
A key Crown witness, who has name suppression, admitted driving Haenga to a known Black Power address in Palmerston North roughly 40 minutes before the murder.
That witness, who is not a Black Power member, then drove away with Haenga and another person he later identified to police as Richards, before stopping at another address where he got out and Cunningham got in to drive.
Royden Haenga’s lawyer says he intended to scare Gage, not kill him. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson
It was Cunningham’s evidence that, as he was driving along Croydon Ave, it was Haenga who told him to turn around as they drove past Gage and his family sitting in their car in the driveway.
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Carter said CCTV footage places Haenga’s white Nissan Teana driving towards The Farm shortly before the murder, and more footage shows it speeding away from the scene of the crime on Croydon Ave on August 6, 2023.
In that footage, gunshots can be heard and Gage’s partner, Amethyst Tukaki, and her three children can be heard screaming in the aftermath.
Carter referenced forensic evidence heard in the trial showing that, in total, nine bullets were fired from two guns.
Six of them struck Gage. Five of them, the Crown says, were fired by Richards, while the sixth, which struck Gage in the arm, was allegedly from Haenga.
“You’ve heard the shooting and the audio,” Carter said, “He was shot six times in front of his family, while he sat defenceless and unprotected in his vehicle.”
Carter said it was clear that Richards was the third person in the car, and that there was an overwhelming amount of evidence to support that.
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However, Carter said that Haenga facilitated the murder to the point it couldn’t have happened without him by supplying the car, the local knowledge and the driver.
The prosecutor also said Haenga deliberately shot at Gage, and had brought a gun he knew was loaded, which he aimed at the other man and squeezed the trigger.
Carter said that while, yes, Gage was a member of the Mongrel Mob, he was also a family man and a father to four children, and he’d had nothing to do with the gang violence from days earlier.
Hori Gage was shot six times while sitting in his car. Photo / Facebook
“But he was the one who paid the perverse price that was demanded for it.
“A man they didn’t even know personally, but they chose to kill him because he was associated with the wrong gang on the wrong weekend.”
Carter said the several-week-long trial had been about holding the two shooters accountable.
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“What they did does amount to an execution,” he said.
“It was targeted, it was a callous, it was cold-blooded.”
Justice Helen McQueen will sum up the case for the jury on Thursday morning, before they are sent out to deliberate.
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū, covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.