Sentencing in October 2021
Katie Todd, Reporter
Auckland, July 27, 2021
Police killer Eli Epiha has been found guilty on a charge of attempted murder, after shooting two officers in Auckland last June, killing Matthew Hunt and wounding David Goldfinch.
Epiha had already admitted the murder of Hunt and reckless driving causing injury. The accused getaway driver Natalie Bracken has been found guilty of helping Epiha avoid arrest.
In the High Court at Auckland, witnesses and experts have detailed the shooting and its aftermath.
About the incident
Here is how it happened: June 19, 2020:
“We are being shot at.” Those were the final word of Matthew Hunt, uttered into his Police radio as he stepped out of a car.
He had just seen 10 shots fired at his colleague David Goldfinch.
The next four bullets would take the young constable’s life.
That moment would be described as “horrendous” by the Police Commissioner and prompted outpourings of shock and grief around the country.
Hundreds of friends, colleagues and officials gathered at Eden Park to farewell the “supportive, dedicated, loyal and encouraging” young constable, while his mother presented a petition to Parliament signed by nearly 40,000 people, asking for harsher penalties for people who murder Police.
In the High Court at Auckland this month, a Jury heard that Hunt would not have anticipated gunfire on the morning of June 19, 20020 at all. The windy West Auckland day started with “speed checks, licence checks – your everyday traffic policing” for Hunt, who had been in the Police just two years and eight months, and his senior colleague David Goldfinch.
It was the duo’s first time working together. Hunt was behind the wheel of the marked Police car, Goldfinch in the passenger seat.
Goldfinch remembered being parked uphill on Triangle Road in Massey. They briefly waved to another Police officer in an unmarked car, working nearby.
No intention to kill: Eli Epiha
Eli Bob Sauni Epiha told the court that he had no intention to kill Police officers that day when he got up and brushed his teeth. He was planning to visit family in the north. The 24-year-old chose to wear a large camouflage shirt.
He claimed the morning took a turn when his phone rang and he heard the voice of his brother-in-law Leroy on the other end. Leroy was “distressed and scared,” he said. He feared gang members were coming to his house to “tax” him, meaning take his possessions, Epiha translated.
Epiha was not going to let gang members near the house where his nieces and nephews lived, he said. He promptly contacted a friend, asking to borrow their firearms.
“I just wanted to scare them away,” he claimed; to do something that would make them “never come back.”
Whether Epiha truly just wanted to protect his family has been questioned by the Crown in court. Either way, Epiha got into his dark purple Toyota Verossa sedan, drove to an address in Massey, and collected two loaded guns, a Winchester lever-action rifle that he placed in the back, and a Norinco semi-automatic, which he laid against the passenger seat.
It was “scary looking”, he told the court.
“I didn’t know if it was a semi-automatic or an automatic at the time.”
The crash
The two officers spotted Epiha driving erratically. Goldfinch saw the car enter the intersection “way too fast” then turn slowly into Reynella Drive.
“That is some pretty poor driving,” Goldfinch thought.
Hunt indicated, U-turned, and began to follow the car on Reynella Drive, where it continued to move sedately, then dipped out of view. It reappeared going up a hill “at the rate of knots,” Goldfinch said.
Epiha had “gapped it,” he recalled. He was endeavouring to put as much distance between himself and the Police car as possible. Until a rubbish truck abruptly entered his line of vision.
He braked and the car spun around 180 degrees – then crashed. It hit a parked Toyota Prius and settled facing the wrong way on the street.
Epiha said that he jabbed at the accelerator, but it was not working properly. The engine revved loudly. Smoke billowed out. The car would only crawl forward, with just enough oomph to manoeuvre into a driveway.
“I saw the smoke in the sky … I had not smelled anything like it before,” remembered witness Pesley Faaui, who was on the way to a nearby fruit shop.
The court heard descriptions of loud screaming as a woman clutched her husband near the back of the Prius. He’d been hit. The 37-year-old was knocked out cold, surrounded by the bags he had been packing into the car for a family trip to Rotorua.
Paramedics would later find a laceration on the back of his skull and fractures to his back and ribs.
The trial
Epiha and Goldfinch both gave evidence during a two-week trial in the High Court in Auckland in July 2021, before a jury of 12 people and Justice Venning. For most of the trial the public gallery was packed with friends and family and colleagues of Hunt.
Katie Todd is a Reporter at Radio New Zealand. The above is a highly edited version. For full text, please click here. Published under a Special Agreement with www.rnz.co.nz
