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When a figure approached Orren Williams on his driveway, he thought ‘it’s him or me’, and pulled the trigger on his semiautomatic.
Three or four men, one with a gun, had forced their way through Williams’ front door, wounded him and his wife, and stood over them at gunpoint in their living room.
However, when an intruder pointed a gun at Williams, he had the feeling that the man would not shoot, something the prosecution pressed in cross-examination.
The four intruders would end up with gunshot wounds after breaking in to steal Williams’ rural property, which overlooks Kāwhia harbor, and one man would not survive.
Orren Scott Williams, 38, is on trial for murder and three counts of wounding with intent to cause serious bodily harm in the June 2019 incident.
The silhouette Williams shot appeared unexpectedly when he left in the early hours of June 6, 2019, to see why the intruders’ car had stopped after appearing to be leaving.
Williams saw the person’s elbows to the side and thought it was “the guy with the gun.”
He jumped behind the blanket, but decided it was now or never.
“I thought the guy had a gun, so it was him or me,” he told the jury.
“I was engaged. They know I’m there, I’m in broad light … I stepped back to the right, raised my firearm, and pulled the trigger.”
Dominico Zapata / Things
Specialized police search teams combed Williams’ property in Hauturu, near Kāwhia, after the shooting.
He kept pulling it, pointing at the car, he said.
When he ran out of ammunition, he returned to the garage, pausing as fear and disbelief ran through his mind, he said.
I thought to myself, I’ve pissed off those guys so they’ll fix me again.
After recharging, he stepped out to the fence next to a children’s swing and discovered that the car was now facing his house.
Thinking the men were trying to illuminate the area and see where he was, he fired the rifle into the darkness over his vehicle, he said.
When his ammunition ran out again and he started walking back to the garage, he saw the car move backwards, then the headlights started to go off.
He watched until the vehicle went down the long driveway and onto the highway, then went to find his wife and two children, he said.
They weren’t in the house, but the window of his son’s room was open even though it was the middle of winter, which made him think they had escaped for it.
Those injured in the shooting were Faalili Moleli Fauatea, who died from his gunshot wounds, Shaun Te Kanawa, Joe Tumaialu and Grayson Toilolo.
When a gun was pointed at Williams inside the home, she learned that the man holding it was not planning to shoot, Crown Prosecutor Jacinda Hamilton said during questioning.
Williams said he first saw the gun when it fell to the ground after fighting intruders in the dining room.
“You knew the man wouldn’t shoot you, you knew you could leave Taryn there because you knew he wasn’t going to shoot her either,” Hamilton said.
“I guess so,” Williams replied.
“Because if you thought that by aggravating the man that he might start shooting, you wouldn’t expose your wife to that kind of danger,” Hamilton continued.
“Far from being worried about aggravating it, you jumped up, hit him, grabbed the taiaha and ran.”
Hamilton also focused the questions on Williams’ cannabis sales activities.
He had been selling large quantities and from home, he said.
The posts referred to three, meaning pounds or cubits, for $ 9,600 “in one push,” he said.
The sales were on behalf of a friend, Williams said, often costing less than was discussed, and he didn’t think he’d ever sold more than three-quarters of a pound.
I would give the cash to the cannabis owner and, in the meantime, “had it in my wallet.”
Hamilton pressed Williams on whether he had thought the intruders might be coming for cannabis and considered telling them where it was.
“If I had known they wanted the cannabis, they could have taken it. I would have given it to them,” he said.
