Tolley <\/a>started off yesterday by addressing Helen Verry\u2019s husband, Tim, who has sat in the front row at the inquest every day.<\/p>\n\u201cThis has been really confronting, and I just want to say there\u2019s not a week that goes by that were not praying for you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here, not to hide, but to make sure that no stone is unturned because we lost a friend.\u201d<\/p>\n
He told the inquest that he went on secondment to do ministerial work for another church two days after Verry\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t know how many tears I cried,\u201d he said about having to leave Church Unlimited at that time.<\/p>\n
He confirmed what the inquest had heard many times already, that the church did not see the roller door as a hazard.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo the best of our knowledge, it was working fine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHindsight is a great thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Pastor]()
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.<\/p>\n
In his property manager role, he did regular checks of church property, roughly every six months, to look for hazards or maintenance needed.<\/p>\n
While being questioned by WorkSafe NZ lawyer Karlene O\u2019Halloran 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.<\/p>\n
He told O\u2019Halloran they didn\u2019t have any records of those checks, and that was something that he learned to do in the wake of Verry\u2019s death and WorkSafe\u2019s investigation.<\/p>\n
There were some photos taken of the walk-arounds, however, and O\u2019Halloran asked Tolley why they hadn\u2019t been provided to WorkSafe during the investigation.<\/p>\n
He said that, while on secondment, he was not asked by the church to supply those photos for WorkSafe.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou, as the property manager, would have a lot of information about the state of the property,\u201d O\u2019Halloran continued. \u201cWhat I\u2019m trying to understand is why weren\u2019t you involved after this significant event has occurred?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was available for whatever was asked of me,\u201d Tolley responded.<\/p>\n
He was involved in one or two Church Unlimited meetings about the investigation, but he couldn\u2019t remember much else.<\/p>\n
\u201c[I\u2019m] really … not trying to protect myself,\u201d he said. \u201cI was busy travelling up and down the country … I can\u2019t shed any more light on it than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The chain hanging down<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
He needed the help of another security guard to lift the door off her.<\/p>\n
His evidence was that he saw Verry pull a chain to pull the door down, which resulted in her being crushed.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Tolley told the court he wished he had seen the chain hanging down from the door before the accident, but he hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
He was not there during the fatal accident, but his \u201cpersonal take\u201d was that Verry reached up for the chain and, \u201cfor whatever reason\u201d, pulled.<\/p>\n
Until that \u201ctragic moment\u201d, he had never heard of, or seen, anyone touching the chain.<\/p>\n
![\"Coroner]()
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<\/p>\n
\u2018No stone\u2019 echoes grieving husband\u2019s words<\/p>\n
At the conclusion of his questioning, Tolley was asked why he had used the phrase \u201cno stone left unturned\u201d when addressing Tim Verry, which echoed what Verry had said he wanted at the outset of the inquest.<\/p>\n
Tolley said he echoed Verry\u2019s words because he wanted the same outcome as the grieving husband.<\/p>\n
He said he had the sense that the phrase \u201cno stone left unturned\u201d implied that the church was trying to hide something.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to show Tim that we\u2019re not here to hide anything … that the church is not here to cover up … I got the sense that … that was coming through … I\u2019m not trying to lie … I\u2019m a very truthful person … I just wanted to make it clear we\u2019re just here to see the same outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n
The inquest is set down until the first week of June.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s currently based in Auckland, covering justice-related stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tolley was appointed property manager of the church\u2019s sprawling West Auckland site in 2013. He told the inquest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,12897,34954,634,6259,62821,6871,32576,66363,10109,13999,93,111,139,16546,69,9010,814,92024,4514,312,213,4468,61,80797,106954,224598,8844,14638,540],"class_list":["post-439648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-church","tag-crushed","tag-death","tag-door","tag-grieving","tag-has","tag-helen","tag-hide","tag-husband","tag-inquest","tag-manager","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nothing","tag-nz","tag-pastor","tag-property","tag-roller","tag-same","tag-says","tag-sports","tag-thing","tag-to","tag-unlimited","tag-verry","tag-verrys","tag-victims","tag-wants","tag-where"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439648","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=439648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}