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MARK TAYLOR / Stuff
Four men broke into Orren Scott Williams’ home to steal drugs in the winter of 2019, and he is alleged to have shot them, killed one and injured the others.
A man is accused of shooting to death an intruder who attempted to steal drugs from his home and seriously wounding three of the man’s associates with the same rifle.
But the jury has to decide whether 38-year-old Orren Scott Williams shot repeatedly as the men fled for their lives, or whether he used reasonable self-defense after intruders, some armed, broke down his door in the middle of the night.
Williams faces one count of murder in the death of Faalili Moleli Fauatea and one count of wounding the other three men with the intent to cause serious bodily harm: Joe Tumaialu, Grayson Toilolo and Shaun Te Kanawa.
The four men had arrived at Williams’ home, which overlooks Kāwhia Harbor on Waikato’s west coast, with weapons, including a handgun, around 3:30 a.m. on June 6, 2019.
Williams is a drug dealer who sold from his family’s home, Crown Prosecutor Rebecca Mann told the jury.
The men had been told that he had sacks of cannabis and was planning to steal some.
The incident occurred in Hauturu, near Kāwhia, on the west coast of Waikato.
But the balance of power changed completely when Williams pulled a military-style semi-automatic rifle from his weapons cabinet, Mann told jury.
“What he will come to understand is that when the defendant shot those men, they were leaving. They were running away,” Crown Prosecutor Rebecca Mann said in opening the case.
“This defendant shot them over and over again.”
Fauatea, the man who died, was shot almost in the center of the lower back and a forensic pathologist has said the trajectory of the bullet coincided with Fauatea leaning forward to run.
There is no question that the aggravated robbery was wrong, Mann said, and the men who survived have been or are being prosecuted.
But that’s chapter one of the night’s events, and the murder trial concerns chapter two: what Williams did next.
Crown’s case was that he not only shot at the fleeing men (photos of the blood-stained car the men left the property were shown to the jury), but he also went out hunting them.
He didn’t want them to get away with trying to rob him, he said, and called a friend in Te Awamutu for help, noting that the men’s vehicle had bullet holes in it.
The intruders went to the nearby Hauturu school for help, Mann said, and an associate arrived at the scene of “total carnage.”
But defense attorney Philip Morgan QC rejected Crown’s description of the events, telling jurors that they would have to find out what happened at Williams’ hilltop home.
“At the time the shots were fired, this was not a case of men fleeing, escaping. None of that,” he said.
Christel Yardley / Stuff
Orren Scott Williams is on trial in Hamilton Superior Court.
New Zealand law on self-defense states that a person can use force that is reasonable for the circumstances as he sees them, he said.
It will be “glaringly obvious” to the jury that this was a life and death situation, but not as the Crown had described it, he said.
The defense’s position is that Williams was fully justified in using the force he did, Morgan said.
“The force used by the defendant was fatal to one man and seriously injured three others.”
The key questions for the jury will be what happened in the house, how Williams would have viewed the circumstances and, given that, whether the force he used was reasonable.
The trial is expected to last up to two weeks.
The men who survived will not present evidence, Mann told the jury.
