July 29, 2010

Trial hears fate of 'toy' pistol involved in fatal fight

Timothy Constable murder trial, Day 4. By Anne Clarkson and David Clarkson

The fate of the imitation pistol that Timothy John Constable was holding when he was killed has now been revealed at the trial of three men charged with his murder.

The pistol is in court as an exhibit but it disappeared on the night he was killed in a street in the Christchurch suburb of Burnside and it was not found for months.

Mr Constable’s father, Stephen Constable, told what happened when he was giving evidence during the trial before Justice Lester Chisholm and a jury in the High Court at Christchurch.

Stephen Constable picked up the imitation pistol – he described it as “a toy” or “cap gun” – and put it in the police car on the passenger side floor, but when the police moved him to another car he hid it in his pants.

They took him to Timothy Constable’s mother to tell her what had happened and he threw the pistol into some bushes and later hid it beneath some tin in a barn. Months later he told the police about the gun as he said he felt guilty and gutted about not telling them earlier.

Adam Robert Gempton, 21, Steven Wayne Bright, 26, and Levi Michael Coombs, 18, are charged with murder, while Shaharna Margaret Hickey, 23, and Shahana Mikena Coombs, 21, are charged with assault. They deny all charges.

The crown is calling evidence from 57 witnesses in the four-week trial before Justice Lester Chisholm and a jury.

Mr Constable said he took his 24-year-old son to the Todd Avenue address to pick up his girlfriend Gisinda Coombs on the night of August 6-7 last year.

On the way his son was receiving phone calls and getting “aggro”, he said. The people he was phoning were hanging up on him.

Mr Constable said he was very aware of the ups and downs in the relationship between his son and the 18-year-old girlfriend. They argued a lot but always ended up together.

When they arrived outside the house in Todd Avenue he stayed in the driver’s seat, and could hear screaming coming from the house. He told his son not to go on the property and saw him standing by the driveway. He got out of the car and stood behind him.

He saw a male standing by the fence who was yelling, and his son was yelling back.

Gisinda Coombs ran out of the gate and people dragged her back.

He said someone started punching him, and there were lots of people in the roadway.

His front windscreen was smashed, and people were breaking other windows of the car.

In the fracas that followed he was punched a few times and lost track of what was happening with his son and Gisinda Coombs.

He said he heard someone yell about a gun, and he decided to call 111.

He recalled Bright on top of his son telling him to wake up and realised he was trying to resuscitate him with CPR.

The police put him through to the ambulance service and he was passing on the messages from them.

He saw there was no blood on the wound on his son’s head so thought he must have been dead before that blow. He did not know his son had been stabbed.

When the police arrived he went to his vehicle to get his wallet and found the gun on the ground by the driver’s door.

He said the gun could not fire bullets, it was just a toy, but it made a very loud bang.

He said that if that gun had gone off that night, as some of the witnesses claimed, everyone would have heard it. He said it didn’t go off.

He realised his son must have taken the gun from where it was hidden in his bus, and did not know that he had it.

Cross-examined by defence counsel for Shahana and Levi Coombs, Tony Greig, he said that the pistol had been bought in a gunshop, with no licence required for the purchase. He agreed that although he referred to it as a toy or a cap gun, “it looks like the real thing”.

He denied that his son had been holding or pointing the gun after they arrived outside the property. “If he had been pointing it I would have grabbed it off him and given him a smack around the earhole,” Mr Constable said.

He denied that he had hidden the pistol to protect his son from the accusation that had been wielding a firearm that night.