WINZ worker hit by three blasts, trial told
WINZ staff member Susan Leigh Cleveland probably had her right arm raised protecting her head when she was hit by the shotgun slug that killed her – the second of three shots aimed at her.
Consultant forensic pathologist Dr Martin David Sage demonstrated in court the likely position of the 55-year-old victim of the September 1 shotgun shootings at the WINZ office in Ashburton.
Dr Sage took off his jacket to show the jury how he believed Susan Cleveland was positioned as she was shot three times, allegedly by Russell John Tully, 49, who is on trial for two murders and two attempted murders.
The trial has been shown the CCTV footage of the shootings several times now. Part of video shows the balaclava-clad gunman firing three shots at a target off-screen.
Dr Sage said he believed the first shot had hit Susan Cleveland’s chest area with pellets but they had not penetrated. She was then evidently leaning forward with her right arm raised alongside the right side of her head when she was hit by a solid slug from the next shot.
The slug entered under her right arm, crossed her chest and passed through her heart and diaphragm before lodging near her left flank where it was found during the post mortem examination.
She was then hit by another shot with pellets in the collar area which had not caused any major vascular injuries.
The injury from the solid slug was “unequivocally unsurvivable”, he told the trial’s sixth day before Justice Cameron Mander and a jury in the High Court at Christchurch.
He also described the injuries to the other victim, Peggy Turuhira Noble, 67, who was shot in the chest as she worked at the office’s reception desk.
He said the blast had hit her chest at an angle “demolishing the aorta as it leaves the heart”, and perforating two chambers of the heart, and a lung. An X-ray showed 158 shotgun pellets within the chest cavity. The injury was “unequivocably unsurvivable” and the victim would have collapsed and died more or less immediately.
Tully is on trial charged with two murders and the attempted murder of Lindy Louise Curtis and Kim Elizabeth Adams, in a shotgun shooting at the Ashburton Work and Income NZ office on September 1, 2014.
He is also charged with setting a man trap – a steel wire stretched between two trees – and unlawful possession of two shotguns.
Tully, who was not in court today, has no lawyer of his own is represented in court by two amicus curiae (friends of the court), James Rapley and Phil Shamy. Andrew McRae and Mark Zarifeh represent the Crown.
A scientist who examined the scene told the trial of finding evidence of six shotgun shots being fired in the WINZ office during the incident.
Category: Focus
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