Mon, 23 Nov 2009 8:34p.m.
A 14-year-old south Auckland cannabis dealer was killed by a strike on the head with a hammer after failing to make payments on an air-gun, a jury was told today.
Nathan Tuiti Reo Mutunga Williams, 26, and Daniel Bobby Tumata, 25, appeared at the High Court in Auckland charged with murdering 14-year-old John Hapeta.
Williams and Tumata face one other charge jointly with a 17-year-old boy, who has name suppression, of assault with intent to rob.
The jury was sworn in this morning for the trial, which is expected to last two weeks.
Opening the case for the Crown, prosecutor Ben Finn told the jury that John Hapeta died after two men armed with a gun and a hammer gatecrashed a birthday party at the family home in Weymouth, south of Auckland.
The men, who were dressed in black with bandanas covering their faces, assaulted John Hapeta's friend Christopher Burns, who was urinating in the garden, Mr Finn said.
The men grabbed him and demanded drugs. When he said he didn't have any, he was hit on the back of the head with a blunt object.
Barking dogs alerted John Hapeta's parents, who were inside the house watching television shortly before John was hit with a hammer on the back of his head.
By the time police arrived at the Weymouth house about 9pm, he was dead.
"His skull was caved in by the force of the hammer blow," Mr Finn told the jury.
Both attackers fled into the darkness after the incident on August 12 last year, the jury was told.
Although the 17-year-old defendant was not at the scene, he is accused of encouraging Williams and Tumata to steal cannabis from John Hapeta at his home.
It was known in the neighbourhood that he sold cannabis. He lived with his parents, a sister and brother and a cousin in the family home.
Two days before he was killed, John Hapeta bought an air-gun from another boy in the neighbourhood, who wanted to be paid for the gun in cannabis.
John Hapeta's father later told police that his son had told him he'd been threatened and got into an argument with the boy who sold him the gun.
Mr Finn said Williams struck the fatal blow but Tumata was also liable for murder by actively assisting Williams.
Marie Dyhrberg and Barbara Hunt, representing Williams, and Shane Tait and Ish Jayanandan, defending Tumata, did not make an opening address.
Shane Cassidy, defending the 17-year-old, told the jury his client did not encourage the tragedy which unravelled.
"Knowing that something might happen does not make you guilty of what others do," Mr Cassidy said.
The Crown is expected to call 30 witnesses during the trial.
NZPA