Trial hears different accounts of bashing
A 23-year-old man remembers pushing and wrestling but has no memory of the bashing that put him in hospital and now the defence in a Christchurch District Court trial says the case is a whodunit.
The defence team is raising questions of who carried out the bashing, and when, and pointing to inconsistencies in the victim’s accounts.
The Crown says the bashing was carried out 52-year-old Stephen Edward Fenelon, after he asked the alleged victim, Ahmed Hassan Ahmed – a Muslim man of Somalian background – if he was an Islamic State supporter.
Mr Ahmed remembered pushing Fenelon, and telling him he was ignorant and an idiot. Then he told the jury he remembered wrestling and being eye-gouged before blacking out. He woke to find that he had serious facial injuries including a fractured eye socket that needed a titanium plate inserted.
Fenelon, a plumber, denies a charge of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm in the four-day trial before Judge Alistair Garland a jury.
Crown prosecutor Aja Trinder said the bashing took place at Fenelon’s son’s 21st birthday party at the Sydenham Cricket clubrooms on September 14, 2014. She said Fenelon had been speaking congenially with Mr Ahmed during the party, but his mood later darkened. The bashing took place inside the clubrooms after he had asked Mr Ahmed to leave and after the man returned when he could not get a taxi and wanted to use the phone.
She said blood from the victim was found on Fenelon’s clothes.
But one defence counsel, Kiran Paima, told the jury that every bit of evidence would be important. “It is not simply a case of who did this, but when?” he said.
Cross-examining the victim, defence counsel Tony Garrett pointed to other accounts of what happened, that the victim had given to witnesses including police and ambulance officers, but Mr Ahmed replied that he could not recall.
He had told ambulance officers that he wasn’t sure who did it, but told another witness “there was a gang of them” and he had been hammered.
He told a police officer, “I don’t want anything to come of it, but I can’t believe they did it.”
The witness said he could not recall speaking to the constable.
He told an ambulance officer that there had been an altercation with the father of the boy who had the 21st party.
Mr Garrett said there would be defence evidence from an off-duty policeman whose car was approached by a man fitting Mr Ahmed’s description as he drove through the area. He believed the man was intoxicated as he came up to the car while it was stopped at the lights.
“He yelled at me to get out of the car to talk about what’s going on,” the officer would say. The man also yelled, “You are scared of the colour of my skin,” and called the male officer a “bitch” as he drove off.
Mr Ahmed did not recall the incident, he said.
Mr Garrett put to him that prints in a blood-like substance had been found on the block wall outside the clubrooms. He suggested that they were the man’s prints, as he steadied himself against the wall.
The witness said he could not recall and did not know how they got there.
The case is continuing.
Category: News
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