This story contains some graphic detail and may be distressing to readers.
Witnesses have described hiding from gunfire, watching an officer fall and seeing an armed man calmly 'stroll' from the fatal shooting of Constable Matthew Hunt.
Eli Epiha (pictured) is on trial at the High Court in Auckland and has admitted killing officer Matthew Hunt. Photo: RNZ / Nick Monro
Witnesses have described hiding from gunfire, watching an officer fall and seeing an armed man calmly 'stroll' from the fatal shooting of Constable Matthew Hunt.
Eli Epiha is on trial at the High Court in Auckland after fleeing police in Massey, crashing into a parked car and a bystander, then firing 14 shots, hitting two officers.
He admits murdering the young constable and one charge of dangerous driving causing injury, but denies trying to murder Hunt's colleague officer David Goldfinch, who was wounded.
Natalie Bracken denies being an accessory to murder by allegedly driving a getaway car.
Jacob Mahia was at home on Reynella Drive on 19 June last year when he heard a crash and ran outside with his mother's partner, called Sam.
Mahia said he saw a damaged Toyota Prius across the road with a man lying on the ground behind it and a woman screaming next to him.
There was a black car facing the wrong way on the street and revving its engine, he said.
When a police car pulled up, he said a man jumped out of the black car holding a gun like an AK47.
"His hand was on the trigger in the shooting position, ready to shoot," he said, then "within seconds," he said there were shots.
"As soon as I heard those gunshots I pulled Sam by the back of the shirt. We had gone behind one of the cars to hide," he said.
He recalled the man with the gun "walking slowly towards the cop car" during the gunfire.
Once the man was out of his view, he said he and Sam ran inside and closed the curtains, and his mother rang the police.
They heard more shots, and Sam looked out his bedroom window.
"We could see a lady that was a couple of houses down, waving at the guy with the gun. She was waving her arms around, trying to get the guy's attention to follow her," he said.
"It was quite a panicked wave."
Mahia recalled a man with a gun walking away from the police cars and out of his sight with a "casual stroll... like you do around the malls."
Pesley Faaui was driving to a fruit shop that morning, when he came around a bend on Reynella Drive and saw something he struggled to put into words in the courtroom:
"I stopped. I looked left and right. And that's when I saw the shooting happen," he said.
About ten metres from his car he remembers seeing a large man with a moustache or a goatie focussing down the barrel of a gun.
He also remembers a police officer 'trying to run or get cover.'
"I saw the police officer fall to the ground."
The jury has been shown cellphone footage showing a man with a gun appearing to flee the scene in a silver Mazda, driven by a woman with brown hair who the crown says is Bracken.
In the witness box today Marcus Tiatia and his partner Eiysha Warren-Hetherington admitted owning that Mazda.
During questioning by prosecutor Brian Dickey, Tiatia couldn't say how the Mazda came to be in the possession of Bracken - who he said was his brother's ex-partner and had been staying at his house.
But Warren-Hetherington described being threatened by the gunman and Bracken fetching the keys.
"He pointed the gun at us and he asked us to take him away," she said.
Tiatia could remember seeing an injured police officer sheltering behind his own car, then running down the back of his property.
He described the look on the man's face.
"I looked into his eyes, he looked scared."
Tiatia said he was scared too.
