“That’s what happens when you come to Beach Haven.” 

Those are the words witnesses heard as two youths, then aged 14 and 17, stood in front of critically wounded motorist Joshuah Tasi’s vehicle following a “co-ordinated” stab attack, prosecutors told jurors today as testimony began in the teens’ murder trial. 

The defendants, now aged 15 and 19, continue to have name suppression. They were arrested in March last year, hours after Tasi, 28, succumbed to a stab wound to the chest on Beach Haven Rd in the North Shore suburb of the same name. 

Jurors in the High Court at Auckland are expected to hear evidence during the three-week trial that Tasi was also stabbed in the forehead, face, shoulder, chest, calf and hand. 

Prosecutor Brett Tantrum said during his opening address today that both defendants are charged with murder because they appear to have “orchestrated and planned” the stabbing following a road rage incident moments earlier. 

Tasi, driving a silver van, had first interacted with the defendants after he pulled up behind their black BMW at a T-intersection a short distance away, authorities allege. The older defendant, who was driving the BMW, was not moving at the intersection so he could talk to a friend outside the car, Tantrum told jurors. 

It appears words were exchanged between the two drivers as Tasi pulled around the BMW and on to Beach Haven Rd, the prosecutor said, explaining that the driver of the BMW then sped off from the person he was talking to and caught up to Tasi’s vehicle. Both vehicles pulled over on the side of the road after the BMW cut in front of Tasi’s van, causing a rear-end crash, authorities allege. 

It’s then that the young defendants are alleged to have exited the BMW, with the 17-year-old approaching the driver’s side of the van and the 14-year-old positioning himself at the passenger door, Tantrum told jurors. Witnesses who were out for a walk or watching from inside their homes that Friday evening thought they saw about 10 seconds of what appeared to be both defendants punching inside the vehicle, Tantrum said. 

“Unbeknown to bystanders ... he had been repeatedly stabbed,” Tantrum said. “He died relatively quickly after [the defendants] left him.” 

Joshuah Tasi was fatally stabbed during an incident in the Auckland suburb of Beach Haven. 

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The duo were arrested in Northland early the next morning following a tip-off and police stake-out. 

Police would later discover the defendants’ fingerprints on Tasi’s van, as well as what appeared to be Tasi’s blood inside the BMW, which had been abandoned near Glenfield Rd, jurors were told. 

Defence lawyer Marie Taylor-Cyphers, representing the older of the two teens, asked jurors during a short opening statement to pay close attention to the timing of what occurred that day and to consider a time when they themselves might have been involved in a car accident - “you step out, your heart’s racing”. 

One thing should be made clear, she said: Her client “never intended to kill Mr Tasi”. Jurors should also consider what was going through her client’s mind at the time, she said. 

Ian Tucker, representing the younger defendant, also kept his opening remarks short, as is required for the defence at the start of a trial. 

“The trial ... will involve some distasteful and upsetting material,” he predicted. But his client, he added, is “entitled to a calm and dispassionate assessment of the evidence”. 

The trial continues before Justice David Johnstone and the jury. 

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.