A 13-year-old boy accused of murdering another teen at Dunedin’s bus hub told the court how a traumatic incident changed the course of his life.
The defendant, who has interim name suppression, is on trial in the High Court at Dunedin defending the charge of murder.
He said he was acting in self-defence when he fatally stabbed Enere Taana-Mclaren, 16, on May 23 last year.
Yesterday, the now 14-year-old told the jury about being bullied at school, and later assaulted and robbed.
For three months after that he isolated himself.
"I had stayed in my room," he told the jury.
"I didn’t want to go out and socialise because I was afraid that I would get smashed over and that I would get jumped."
After the assault, his mother told him he needed to stand up for himself.
"My mum said that I shouldn’t let people walk over me and that I should stand up for myself."
He watched YouTube videos about how to fight and began carrying a knife in his waistband.
"I started using more slang and started walking with confidence.
"I wanted others to see me as tough so they wouldn’t want to bully me or have problems with me."
On one occasion at the bus hub, he saw a bully and flashed the knife at him.
This caused the bully to leave.
"I thought that if [the bully] saw the knife and he walked away I should just keep doing it if anyone else wanted to smash me over," he said.
He would sneak any knife from his parents’ kitchen drawer.
Sometimes he would take a butter knife, and he did not usually carry the 30cm knife he used on May 23.
The defendant told the jury that earlier on the day of the incident he was wrongly accused of vaping.
He was kept in an office for about an hour and was sending his friend messages about fighting the person who "snitched".
The fight did not happen, and the defendant said he was never going to carry out the threats.
"I was venting to [my friend] about the situation," he said.
"I was trying to come off as, I don’t know, tough."
Counsel Anne Stevens KC opened the defence case by telling the jury her client was either acting in self-defence, or did not mean to kill Enere.
"He was a 13-year-old schoolboy who had been bullied and assaulted from primary school onwards and who had suffered the trauma of a violent assault."
Enere showed hostility towards the defendant from the moment he stepped off the bus.
Enere was bigger, older and stronger than the defendant, she said.
"He felt he was in big trouble — he is going to be bashed.
"He will describe his anxiety at that point and how adrenaline kicks in, he has to protect himself."
Mrs Stevens would call other witnesses who had experienced Enere being violent at the bus hub on other occasions.
One man would say Enere hit him with a pair of headphones and another would say the boy punched him in the face, knocking out a tooth.
"Enere has a tendency to respond with violence to people who challenge him."
While the defendant did not know this about Enere, Mrs Stevens said he "sensed" it.
She reminded the jury why the defendant decided to carry a knife, and that flashing it to a threatening person had worked in the past.
"Showing the knife was all it took.
"The safety device of carrying a knife worked for [the defendant]."
The trial is being presided over by Justice Robert Osborne.
The defendant is expected to continue giving evidence today.
