"Don't let no-one step you out, G."
It was April last year and 13-year-old Kevin* received the message from a mate.
He had just been confronted by a former school bully — a teen who had tormented him in the past — but had discovered a way to change the power dynamic.
"I was getting off the bus and I was walking past the bus hub and he tried stepping me out, but I had my knife," Kevin told his friend.
The message from his friend in response reinforced him, emboldened him.
He was not going to be the victim.
During Kevin’s trial in the High Court at Dunedin this month, he described how all it had taken was "flashing" the knife, which was tucked into the waistband of his pants, to neutralise the menace of the bully.
"I felt good that I won, basically," he later told a psychiatrist.
Only weeks after the incident, Kevin was back at the bus hub.
He had got off the No 44 bus to St Kilda and was transferring to visit a friend on the peninsula — the friend he had messaged in April.
The No 18 to Portobello was waiting. All he had to do was make the short walk past the police station and board.
A teenager in a Trinity Catholic College uniform had told him to pull his socks down "b.... boy". Kevin flashed him the middle finger and continued walking.
He was just "some random standing there", he told the jury.
It was the next comment, though, that found its mark.
"You sackless c...."
Kevin turned and walked back towards the boy — a decision that was dissected and explored at extreme length over the past couple of weeks.
Kevin grew up in a small town with his family, his mother told the court.
He was picked on because he spoke differently from his peers.
"He had no teeth," she explained.
As a baby, he was a bad sleeper, suffering from colic even as he progressed through primary school, and it was not unusual for him to go to bed at midnight.
But it did not affect his education, she said.
She described Kevin as "over intelligent", having an ability to understand concepts that was "beyond his years".
But alongside that he was always on the go and loved climbing, a prelude to the ADHD diagnosis that came later.
It was at high school things began to come unstuck.
Kevin spoke about immediately becoming a target for bullies at the first Dunedin college he attended.
The abuse escalated following a dispute over a 7-year-old’s bike.
Kevin was with friends at a park and found it "just thrown in the bushes"; his friends dared him to take it and, keen to impress, he did.
Unbeknown to him, the bike belonged to a family member of one of his schoolmates.
Word got back to a dean at school, who confronted Kevin and arranged for the return of the bike the next day.
But the grudge festered.
In August 2023, Kevin returned home from school, excited at having made a new friend.
There was a plan to hang out at her house.
"I gave him a lecture and told him to be home by 5," his mother recalled.
But he returned only half an hour later with a swollen eye.
It was just a bee sting, Kevin claimed. But his mum saw through the flimsy charade.
What happened at Halfway Bush Park was the subject of much scrutiny throughout the trial.
Kevin’s description of the number of assailants, their attire and the severity of their physical violence changed slightly each time he recounted the incident.
At one point it was boys all dressed in black, wearing balaclavas; initially the teenager did not describe being punched unconscious, later he did.
The Crown jumped on the inconsistencies in the trial, while the defence explained it away as an understandable response to an intensely traumatic incident.
When Kevin gave evidence, he told the jury he was quizzed by one of the boys and admitted stealing the bike.
He went to shake his hand, to bury the hatchet and took a blow to the face.
"Ever since that day, I’ve had a fear of people sucker-punching me," Kevin told the court.
As he was beaten, the group stole snacks from his backpack and he recalled seeing them laughing and filming with their cellphones, he said.
He described the last image before he blacked out being a "fat redhead" kid flicking a pocketknife back and forth.
The primary attacker was interviewed by police and admitted punching Kevin and stealing his lollies.
He was adamant, though, there was no knife involved.
"You’re not a punching bag. You should stand up for yourself," Kevin’s mother told him.
Psychiatrists who assessed Kevin said the events in the park were pivotal, undoubtedly changing his life’s trajectory.
He was later diagnosed with PTSD and before that his parents immediately noticed a change in his behaviour.
"[He] was shutting down," his mother told the court.
She described how Kevin would come home from school and sit in his room.
During that period of isolation, however, the teen made a conscious decision to steel himself against the bullies.
In his words: "I could sack it, or get out and face things again."
The court heard how he began watching fight videos on YouTube, and implemented a training regime of weights and push-ups.
He even used an old fridge as a boxing bag, wrapping his hands in clothes as makeshift gloves.
"I was beating down on myself for not being able to stand up for myself," Kevin said.
Life at school continued to be challenging, but he described gaining the respect of other pupils by standing his ground in the face of physical confrontation. He found new friends.
They were "a bit rough", his mum recalled, but there appeared to be a new-found confidence in her son.
"He started going out more, but he’d act differently. He would be wearing different clothes, speak differently," she said.
Underpinning that confidence was something else. A knife.
Kevin told police he would often grab one from the kitchen drawer if he went out in public, as it gave him "the sense of protection".
"I started to have a life for me, myself, knowing I was going to stand up for myself," he said.
Further conflict during the start of 2024 resulted in Kevin transferring to another school and things began positively.
He was achieving academically, playing sport and seemed happy, his mother said.
But Kevin later told a psychiatrist he was struggling in public with what the clinician described as "out-of-control thoughts and fears".
He was reportedly triggered by groups of bigger boys and described feeling "heightened".
"I’d feel really sweaty, hypervigilant ... I’d get a whole bunch of energy like I could run a marathon," Kevin said.
And while life at the new school was more settled, it was not perfect.
He had been stood down for two days after being caught vaping.
On May 23, it happened again, only this time Kevin was adamant it was a case of mistaken identity.
He had been using the toilet and was in the wrong place at the wrong time; a prefect had "snitched" on him, he messaged his friend while he waiting for a meeting with the principal.
The communications between the two boys were presented to the jury.
"Should come south D then we can f... up this c... G," Kevin sent.
"F... up that n..... then meet at yours."
His friend suggested recording the "scrap".
After a couple of tense exchanges with the principal, the school counsellor was tasked with taking Kevin home.
"[He] was calm, polite. There were no obvious signs of emotional dysregulation," he said.
"His voice was calm, he maintained eye contact, didn’t appear to be tense, made small talk — nothing out of the ordinary."
Despite Kevin’s mother saying no information was passed on regarding the earlier stand-off with the principal, the counsellor was certain his notes reflected that the conversation took place.
The teenager asked his father if he could go visit his friend in Macandrew Bay, saying he would be back by dinner.
But when Kevin saw his parents a couple of hours later, he was in police custody.
He said he put it on without thinking, completing an outlandish outfit of a sideways cap, green top, black shoulder bag and black-and-blue socks, featuring melting smiley faces, pulled up almost to his knees.
"It was just another day," Kevin said. "I was alert but it was not a major thing."
His attire caught the attention of Enere.
And a psychiatrist quizzed him on his gait.
"Do you always walk with such swagger?" Dr Maxwell Pankhurst asked.
"It’s just natural, I guess. I feel like it’s normal," Kevin said.
After the exchange of words, the two squared off on the footpath. Initially Enere assumed dominance, posturing as the younger boy took a few steps backwards.
Who was pegged as the aggressor was hotly contested at trial.
It was Enere, the defence argued, making the inflammatory comments, goading Kevin into a fight.
But the Crown pointed to the defendant backtracking to confront the victim, his explanation that he "didn’t want to be the boy that can be bullied".
If the trial proved anything, it was the unreliability of eye-witnesses.
Almost all had the sequence of events wrong, the clothing of the boys involved; one schoolgirl was certain she had seen Kevin pick up a knife from the ground and stab Enere twice in the back as he lay face down.
She was absolutely sure, she said from the witness box.
Another witness went as far as to dispute the accuracy of the CCTV footage while also getting the ethnicity, build and clothing of the defendant wildly wrong.
What actually happened was captured on camera from a multitude of angles, slowed down and played repeatedly for jurors.
It showed Kevin bring his bag forward before pulling out a 31cm black-handled kitchen knife.
But it was not to be the same outcome as had occurred weeks earlier.
"Enere didn’t budge," he said.
As Kevin pressed forward, Enere backed off, pausing to kick him as the fight spilled on to the road.
It was the kick, the defendant said, that put him in "fight mode ... ultra focused".
While he denied chasing Enere or trying to hurt him, the video was paused at one moment early in the trial which did not help his case.
The frozen image depicted him with his outstretched arm holding the knife, cutting a slashing arc across his body.
Every moment of the incident was held up by both sides as a reason for Kevin’s innocence or guilt.
He was driven by fear, overly sensitive to the threat of violence because of his PTSD, impulsive because of his ADHD, the defence suggested.
He was up for a fight, keen to show he would not be cowed or embarrassed in front of the whole bus hub — he would not be "stepped out", according to the prosecution.
Kevin was questioned in painstaking detail about each phase of the incident.
What was going through his head?
While he tried to explain, it was always going to be retrospective, coloured by the fact he was accused of murder.
Perhaps what he told Detective Shelley Dodds the evening of the incident was closest to the truth.
"I wasn’t thinking anything ... Everything was so quick," he said.
But of course, that too could be spun both ways.
The jury were often reminded Kevin was a child: even in court as he sat behind his lawyer he played with sensory toys and there were frequent breaks so he did not get fatigued.
Dr Pankhurst described him as "cheeky and charismatic while at the same time being unsure of himself".
Over two and a-half weeks on trial, it seemed every part of his character came under the microscope without ever providing a conclusive answer.
Was he a scared little boy trying to defend himself or was he just trying to defend his new gangster image?
Did he lash out "wildly" to try to drive Enere back or intentionally harm him?
Did he know such a stabbing could be fatal?
The questions clearly weighed heavily on the jury, who spent more than two full days undertaking their solemn task before finding the legal halfway house between murder and self-defence.
Some of the jurors wiped away tears as the judge thanked them for their service.
Members of Enere’s family in a packed public gallery cried, too. Kevin looked down, bit his lip and nodded almost imperceptibly.
*Name changed to comply with suppression ruling.
