Tolley was appointed property manager of the church’s sprawling West Auckland site in 2013.
He told the inquest that the church had nothing to hide, and that he, too, wanted to get to the bottom of what happened to the beloved youth pastor and whether her death could have been prevented.
‘We’re here, not to hide’
Tolley started off yesterday by addressing Helen Verry’s husband, Tim, who has sat in the front row at the inquest every day.
“This has been really confronting, and I just want to say there’s not a week that goes by that were not praying for you,” he said.
“We’re here, not to hide, but to make sure that no stone is unturned because we lost a friend.”
He told the inquest that he went on secondment to do ministerial work for another church two days after Verry’s death.
“You don’t know how many tears I cried,” he said about having to leave Church Unlimited at that time.
He confirmed what the inquest had heard many times already, that the church did not see the roller door as a hazard.
“To the best of our knowledge, it was working fine,” he said.
“Hindsight is a great thing.”
Pastor Sam Tolley works for Church Unlimited on the ministerial side and, at the time of Helen Verry’s death, he was the church’s property manager.
In his property manager role, he did regular checks of church property, roughly every six months, to look for hazards or maintenance needed.
While being questioned by WorkSafe NZ lawyer Karlene O’Halloran this morning, he said there was no set time for these checks. They would happen whenever he and other church staff were working on the building.
He told O’Halloran they didn’t have any records of those checks, and that was something that he learned to do in the wake of Verry’s death and WorkSafe’s investigation.
There were some photos taken of the walk-arounds, however, and O’Halloran asked Tolley why they hadn’t been provided to WorkSafe during the investigation.
He said that, while on secondment, he was not asked by the church to supply those photos for WorkSafe.
“I really wanna be as helpful as I can … but because I was actually on secondment … if I was around, I would have been a lot more involved.”
“You, as the property manager, would have a lot of information about the state of the property,” O’Halloran continued. “What I’m trying to understand is why weren’t you involved after this significant event has occurred?”
“I was available for whatever was asked of me,” Tolley responded.
He was involved in one or two Church Unlimited meetings about the investigation, but he couldn’t remember much else.
“[I’m] really … not trying to protect myself,” he said. “I was busy travelling up and down the country … I can’t shed any more light on it than that.”
The chain hanging down
Earlier in the inquest, the court heard from church security guard Richard Siulepa, who watched Verry be crushed by the door from outside the church, while looking through the windows.
He needed the help of another security guard to lift the door off her.
His evidence was that he saw Verry pull a chain to pull the door down, which resulted in her being crushed.
There has been much discussion in the inquest about whether the church staff saw the chain hanging down before the accident, and whether Verry pulled it before her death.
Tolley told the court he wished he had seen the chain hanging down from the door before the accident, but he hadn’t.
He was not there during the fatal accident, but his “personal take” was that Verry reached up for the chain and, “for whatever reason”, pulled.
Until that “tragic moment”, he had never heard of, or seen, anyone touching the chain.
Coroner Janet Anderson says the inquest into Helen Verry’s death is to find out why the roller door fell on her, whether the church would have been aware of its danger and to prevent similar deaths. Photo / Michael Craig
‘No stone’ echoes grieving husband’s words
At the conclusion of his questioning, Tolley was asked why he had used the phrase “no stone left unturned” when addressing Tim Verry, which echoed what Verry had said he wanted at the outset of the inquest.
Tolley said he echoed Verry’s words because he wanted the same outcome as the grieving husband.
He said he had the sense that the phrase “no stone left unturned” implied that the church was trying to hide something.
“I wanted to show Tim that we’re not here to hide anything … that the church is not here to cover up … I got the sense that … that was coming through … I’m not trying to lie … I’m a very truthful person … I just wanted to make it clear we’re just here to see the same outcome.”
The inquest is set down until the first week of June.
Ella Scott-Fleming has been a journalist for three years and previously worked at the Otago Daily Times, Gore Ensign and Metro magazine. She has an interest in court and general reporting. She’s currently based in Auckland, covering justice-related stories.