Raglan shooting: Bianca Buckley takes on killer Mark Garson

A man who shot and killed an Australian surfer in his caravan in Raglan has been confronted by the victim’s fiancee in court while delivering his heartbreaking victim impact statement.

Mark Ronald Garson, 24, unexpectedly pleaded guilty in October after being tried in November for the murder of Sean McKinnon and threatening to kill his partner Bianca Buckley.

Garson approached them in his trailer during the early hours of August 16 of last year.

The couple had rented the caravan and driven to Raglan, deciding to spend the night parked in the gorge, which has panoramic views of the Tasman Sea.

During the first hours they were awakened by banging on the window.

Some members of McKinnon’s family watched this morning’s proceedings through an audiovisual link, while his sisters Emmeline and Mary made the trip down the Tasman to look Garson in the eye and share their grief in the courtroom.

Buckley was the first to share her statement in the Hamilton Supreme Court this morning, shocking Garson, who then wiped the tears from his face and bowed in pain, as she turned midway to go over the gruesome details of that night.

She told him how they heard him hitting on the side and around the caravan, saying “I know you’re there.”

Lying there naked, Buckley said McKinnon stuck his head out and asked how he could help him, “in a non-threatening way.”

“He tried to offer her a solution. Sean would have helped anyone … he would have given them everything they needed.”

Buckley told Garson he had a bad feeling about him while muttering “something like ‘I have a gun.’

Garson then demanded the keys to the motorhome before smashing a window, and Buckley eventually cut himself from the glass, his naked body bleeding.

“Sean tried to reason with you … and without warning you shot him, straight through the liver, at point blank range.

“He groaned and said, ‘Dude, you shot me.’

However, McKinnon continued to search for the keys as blood spurted from his body and tried to defuse the situation.

“Then, without warning, you shot him in the base of his skull, killing him instantly.”

She said she could only watch him collapse to the ground “watching his life leave him.”

“Then I realized that I was alone with you and your deadly weapon.”

Buckley managed to stumble out of the truck, covered not just in his blood but McKinnon’s, and stood before Garson naked with his hands raised.

“I didn’t know what to do. I was surprised that a human being could do that … I begged him for mercy, saying, ‘He’s dead.’

“You replied, ‘Yes, bitch, he’s dead.’ You said that. I’ll never forget you said that. You knew what you were doing.”

Garson then forced her back into the trailer to find the keys while pointing the gun at her back, cursing and calling out to her.

Then he said, “I’m not going to kill you, just give me the damn keys.”

She finally found the keys and asked Garson if she could have a moment with her fiancé before he left.

“No, I’ll take care of him,” Garson replied.

“You were so cruel,” he told her.

Garson then left and Buckley started running towards Raglan by the side of the cliff, hoping he wouldn’t come back.

She told Garson that what he did “shocked the world” with a series of events that not even the director of a horror movie could write.

Garson had destroyed her life and her dream with McKinnon, which was to include a wedding and eventually children.

“I am forever changed.”

Garson fled in the trailer and dumped it on the roadside near Gordonton, on the outskirts of Hamilton.

McKinnon’s body was still inside.

Roderick James Finlayson was sentenced to six months in community detention for supplying the weapon.

Family members speak

McKinnon’s sister, Emmeline, also turned to speak to Garson near the end of her statement.

She looked him in the eye and told him that she could have left her brother to get attention or at least take her last breath under the stars.

“To face the heavens so that Sean could return to the heavens,” she told him.

His sister Mary told the court that she could never reconcile her brother’s death and that her life would never be the same again.

“Since Sean left, I feel like someone has turned off the sun.”

He said the blood had drained from him and a great weight had been removed.

Holding back tears, she labeled his death senseless, cruel, and unprovoked; It happened for no reason.

Having run to him when he needed him since she was a child, Mary, now a doctor, said she was of no use to her brother when he needed her most.

Instead, they left him to die alone on a cold, isolated road.

She said that neither she nor her family were not used to death, her father died when Sean was 20 years old. But at least the family was by his side when he died, he said.

“I’d give anything to see him … lie next to him in the sun.

“He belonged to us … our brother, our uncle, our son, and he was important.”

His other sister, Jess, speaking through an audiovisual link, said that her brother was never judgmental and was full of life.

“Sean’s death is on my mind constantly throughout the day and when I go to sleep. I can’t even sleep.

“My heart feels like it has been broken on a daily basis.”

Her death had affected her ability to socialize, be a mother, and also her relationships.

Lachlan, Sean’s brother, said they were more than brothers, “we were best friends.”

His death had also had a “devastating effect on my daily life.”

His thoughts are consumed with pain, but soon after followed by hatred and the question, “why, why?”

“Sean was a kind and loving party guy. He was generous to the extreme.”

The sentence continues.