\u201cIf you\u2019re a party to the plan to rob him, and you know about the presence, the possession, of the machete, it\u2019s use is clearly something that could well happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It was the principal risk of a machete robbery, Steele said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt must have been obvious to each and every of the five occupants of [the car].<\/p>\n
\u201cNot that it would be used, but that it could well be used to cause serious injury in the course of the robbery.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jurors had earlier been told the Crown did not have to prove who struck the fatal blow, only that those in the car knew what could have happened.<\/p>\n
Defence earlier in the trial had pointed to the fact that after 18 months the Crown could not definitively say who struck the killing blow.<\/p>\n
The Crown says using a machete was a foreseeable risk of the robbery. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
Steele told jurors he wouldn\u2019t spend his opening trying to convince them who that was.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question for you and the question I will address in the balance of this address is each of the four defendants\u2019 individual liability for what the Crown says was the entirely foreseeable consequence of their shared common purpose, the robbery of Mr Whorrall,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Crown prosecutor put five questions to the jury: who was in the car, why were they together, what did they know when the car stopped on St Johns Rd, what did they do, and was it foreseeable.<\/p>\n
Steele drew jurors\u2019 attention to the occupant in the car that night who had already pleaded guilty to Whorrall\u2019s robbery and murder.<\/p>\n
The teen had an obvious and long-standing propensity for violent offending, going back to 2021, Steele said.<\/p>\n
He turned to two other teenagers, represented by Panama Le\u2019Au\u2019Anae and Paul Borich, KC, who he said shared similar tendencies towards machete crime.<\/p>\n
Steele said the three of those teens being in the car on that night was not coincidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re together to commit property crime, including the use of a machete,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know there\u2019s a machete in the car and nobody is harvesting bananas.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pointed to an incident roughly half an hour before the attack, where four of the teens allegedly tried to steal a motorbike from Elstree Ave in Glen Innes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that these four or these five are not just out for a drive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is proof of concept when it comes to the broader intention of the group, to commit property crime, to steal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Justice Simon Mount cautioned jurors to reserve judgment about propensity evidence given by the Crown until they had heard from all lawyers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect this will be an important topic, and I want to make sure you do not make any assumptions about how you can use that evidence until after you\u2019ve heard from all counsel and from me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Justice Mount reminded jurors they had only heard one side of the story.<\/p>\n
Steele said the remaining two teens on trial, represented by Marie Taylor-Cyphers and Annabel Maxwell-Scott, did not share the same propensity as the other three.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what happens at Elstree Ave tells us they\u2019re in,\u201d Steele said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not just along for the ride.\u201d<\/p>\n
Defence lawyers will begin their closing addresses before the court on Monday.<\/p>\n
The trial continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four teens have pleaded not guilty to his murder and aggravated robbery in the High Court at Auckland.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[95,26701,27129,74217,10808,11784,38268,44012,101,111,43,139,69,312,9631,54,46003,3040,44013,102,4181],"class_list":["post-645767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-and","tag-attackers","tag-blackwell","tag-catastrophic","tag-crown","tag-fatal","tag-finn","tag-kyle","tag-left","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-says","tag-student","tag-trial","tag-ultimately","tag-us","tag-whorrall","tag-with","tag-wound"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645767","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=645767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}