May 08, 2013

Woman tells trial of strangling during sex

By David Clarkson. Further report on Nikki Roper murder trial, Day 3. A woman has told a High Court trial of murder accused Nikki Roper strangling her during sex a few months before he is alleged to have killed his ex-girlfriend with a carotid or sleeper hold.

The evidence was given on the third day of the trial of 24-year-old Roper, before Justice Forrest Miller and a jury in Christchurch.

The woman, who is now aged 25, was granted name suppression before she gave her evidence about her four-day relationship with Roper in 2010.

They had sex three times. On the last occasion, while they were having sex, Roper had said he was going to put his hands around her throat.

She told him, ?No, it will hurt,? and said she did not want it.

Roper said, ?No, it won?t,? and started strangling her harder and harder until she almost lost consciousness, she said.

?I felt like I was going to die,? she said. She remained conscious, but she could not breathe.

She had pushed him off her and told him to leave her house and never come back. She had a mark on her neck afterwards.

Cross-examined, she acknowledged that she had not made a complaint to the police about the incident, and had not mentioned the strangulation in her first statement to the police.

Roper denies the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Alexsis Maria Tovizi, in December 2010. He also denies unlawfully taking her car, stealing her laptop computer, and five charges of dishonestly using her bankcard to make withdrawals and purchases.