Tue 11 Oct 2011 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
6.00PM: The mother of the teenager accused of murdering gay temporary sworn police officer Denis Phillips has told the High Court in Auckland he came home screaming and crying and smashing windows on the night of the stabbing. Willie Ahsee, 17, is facing a murder charge after he stabbed 59-year-old Phillips in his Papakura flat after a night of drinking on 30 July last year. "He was just yelling and screaming," the teenager's mother Temarae Vainerere said of when her son came home, giving evidence he smashed windows and was "swearing and saying 'ahhhhh, fuck, ahhhh'. I told him to calm down. "He was very drunk. He was wobbly. And he tried to punch the lounge door and he just nipped it and fell down to the ground." Vainerere says she has never seen her son cry in the manner he was, "He was crying and said 'Mum I think I killed someone or stabbed someone, she told the court."I held him because he fell to the ground, and I held him." Neighbours had heard Ahsee screaming and called police. Vainerere said by this stage her son was "spewing mucus" but when police arrived she convinced him to calm down. When an officer offered to take him in for detox she agreed. She told the court when she went to pick him up from the Manukau Police Station the next day he had already left, and was at their Papakura home when she returned. "I asked him if he remembered what he said the night before and he said 'I think I killed someone', and I said 'are you shitting me?' and he replied that he didn't know but he thought so." Vainerere quizzed her son about where he had been the night before. "Later on I asked him that he needs to confess to the police and he didn't say anything. I kept cleaning and just waited. I didn't realise but he got changed and said 'mum I'm ready' and said goodbyes to his brothers and sisters." She said Ahsee wanted to go and see his grandparents in Otara and when he told them what he believed had happened they quizzed him in the same manner she had. Her brother and mother accompanied them to the Manukau Police Station. The teen's mother said she went to the woman at the desk and "said that my son was there to confess that he probably stabbed somebody". Earlier neighbours of Phillips' Green St flat told the court that on the night of 30 July 2010 they heard voices coming from his house, which they considered unusual. They also reported hearing dull thumping noises, which one likened to a person running on a timber floor. One recalled hearing someone say something like "Have you had enough?", "You've had enough" or "I've had enough". One set of neighbours said they considered calling the police or Phillips himself, but decided not to as they knew he liked his privacy. The trial continues at the High Court in Auckland. GayNZ.com's in-court coverage will continue throughout each day of the trial.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Tuesday, 11th October 2011 - 6:00pm