The trial for two people accused of being involved in the murder of 40-year-old Dale Watene began before Justice Gerald Nation in the High Court at Invercargill on Monday.
Sandy Maree Graham (32) is charged with his murder at Otautau on April 16, 2020.
George Ivor Hyde (24) is charged with accessory after the fact to murder at Otautau between April 16 and 27, 2020.
Mr Watene’s body was found about a month after he went missing in the Longwood Forest buried in a shallow grave.
On Monday defence lawyer for Graham, Sarah Saunderson-Warner, said Mr Watene had been shot but it was not done on purpose nor with murderous intent.
When questioned by Crown solicitor Mary-Jane Thomas this morning, Geoffrey Miller said he was the owner of a .22 Ruger rifle which had been lent to Graham.
On May 5 he collected the rifle from Mr Braven, who had picked it up from Graham’s house a few days before, as he needed it to shoot hares and possums at a farm.
After he collected it, he took it out to his back yard.
He didn’t believe the magazine was in the gun at the time and didn’t check it before he pulled the trigger, firing a bullet into the ground not realising there was still a bullet in the firearm.
On two occasions he remembered talking to Graham about the disappearance of Mr Watene.
On the first he asked her if she was involved in Mr Watene’s disappearance.
“She said that ‘Do you think I could do something like that?’. I said I’m not sure I wasn’t there so how would I know,” Mr Miller said.
During another discussion he told Graham that the police had taken all his guns and said they were interested in a .22 calibre rifle.
“What did she say? Crown solicitor Ms Thomas asked him.
“She said well she wished she’d never seen the gun, never got the gun.”
Under cross examination by Graham’s defence lawyer Philip Shamy, Mr Miller couldn’t remember for sure if the magazine was in the rifle or not when he fired the bullet into the ground outside his house.
Before the lunch break today, Graham’s second police interview from August 4, 2020 was played.
In it she admitted to Sergeant Fred Shandley she had sex once with Hyde, either a week or two weeks before the interview.
When Sgt Shandley put it to her that her friend said he had dropped the gun off at her house and only collected it at the start of May, she denied the allegation.
- Karen Pasco, PIJF court reporter
