Morunga and Reihana <\/a>had returned from a tangi and arrived at the Pouto Rd address between 4pm and 5pm on Sunday, September 8. <\/p>\nJones gave an evidential interview describing the chaos that unfolded over the next 24 hours.<\/p>\n
He said he noticed Morunga was agitated and unable to sit still, while Reihana \u201cwas not herself\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething was off, she was not herself at all. She didn\u2019t look happy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Jones said Morunga followed Reihana in and out of the house several times and at one point, was carrying a knife. <\/p>\n
When asked if Reihana saw the knife, he said she would not have because \u201che had it hidden in his pocket\u201d.<\/p>\n
After about 15 minutes, Jones felt unsafe and texted his partner.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is fried as f***, he\u2019s scratching his head with a big knife \u2026 I think something is going to happen tonight,\u201d the text read.<\/p>\n
At 6pm, Jones left the house briefly to alert police and his partner. <\/p>\n
When he returned, he was confronted by an enraged Morunga.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore I even got to the garage, he was outside,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe started running towards the car, started kicking it, bashing on the windows yelling and swearing at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe looked evil. It wasn\u2019t a look you want to look at.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones retreated until police arrived around 6.15pm. <\/p>\n
He escorted officers back to the house, but Morunga and Reihana were gone, along with her car. <\/p>\n
It was dark, and they checked the house through the windows.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe come back through from the deck when police saw blood on the wall and the floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThinking about it at the time now, if I had turned on the lights in the kitchen they would have seen it straight away. I wasn\u2019t thinking properly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones said the police took some photos and left. He confirmed the blood was not there earlier.<\/p>\n
Fearing Morunga would return, Jones stayed at a friend\u2019s house overnight. <\/p>\n
But by morning he had to return to milk the cows and collect his quad bike. <\/p>\n
![\"Police]()
Police used the small seaside hamlet of Glinks Gully as a base for the homicide investigation of Jasmaine Corin Reihana after her remains were found in a burnt-out car in the sand dunes about 17km south. Photo \/ Denise Piper<\/p>\n
When he arrived, he noticed Morunga\u2019s ute \u2014 which had been parked near the house for days \u2014 was gone, replaced by a quad bike.<\/p>\n
With his phone nearly flat, he managed to call his partner, who was driving back from Auckland. <\/p>\n
She told him to call police.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said to get out of there,\u201d Jones said before he went to the cowshed and locked himself inside.<\/p>\n
For the next 30 minutes, he heard Morunga\u2019s ute repeatedly coming and going, sometimes stopping outside the shed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just had that feeling like someone\u2019s outside,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe stopped for a while and then he took off again, he went back to the house and then 10 mins later, came zooming back up to the shed again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was playing on my mind, why you keep coming up here?\u201d<\/p>\n
After 10 minutes of silence, Jones was sure Morunga had left. <\/p>\n
He looked out and saw his partner standing outside the house.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought shi**,\u201d he said, but Morunga was gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was frozen, she was scared.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trial continues before Justice David Johnstone.<\/p>\n
Shannon Pitman is a Whang\u0101rei-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the Te Tai Tokerau region. She is of Ng\u0101puhi\/ Ng\u0101ti P\u016bkenga descent and has worked in digital media for the past five years. She joined NZME in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Morunga, 35, is on trial in the High Court at Whang\u0101rei, charged with the murder of his ex\u2011partner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[95,1763,1968,42,28559,78,159963,61094,4275,43,5006,1118,36356,6289,159964,544,1961,6859,40,38,41,39,54,96,1337,13118,1455,1869],"class_list":{"0":"post-289458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-and","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-discusses","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-herself","13":"tag-in","14":"tag-jasmaine","15":"tag-knife","16":"tag-murder","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-not","19":"tag-of","20":"tag-pocket","21":"tag-readers","22":"tag-reihana","23":"tag-some","24":"tag-this","25":"tag-told","26":"tag-top-news","27":"tag-top-stories","28":"tag-topnews","29":"tag-topstories","30":"tag-trial","31":"tag-upsetting","32":"tag-victim","33":"tag-violence","34":"tag-warning","35":"tag-whangrei"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}