The 14-year-old defendant, who has interim name suppression, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of 16-year-old Enere Taana-McLaren following an incident on May 23 last year and has spent more than two weeks on trial in the High Court at Dunedin.
Yesterday counsel Anne Stevens KC called it a “David-and-Goliath situation”, her client being the younger and smaller of the teens.
She argued he was simply defending himself from Enere at the time, had never meant to inflict any harm and only carried a knife because he was suffering from PTSD after being the victim of a beating nine months earlier.
But Crown prosecutor Richard Smith said it the defendant was “up for a fight” and instigated the violence by confronting Enere on the footpath, just metres from the police station.
The knife-wielding teen was worried about looking like a coward in front of the many people in the bus hub and wanted to protect his tough-guy image, he suggested.
The jury began its deliberations late yesterday afternoon.
It will reconvene at 10am tomorrow.
