$350 for a gram. 

Methamphetamine addict Julius Te Hiva Ka told jurors that was all he was thinking about on the morning of June 3, 2022, as he sat in a car at a West Auckland reserve with Benjamin “Dekoy” Mcintosh, a dealer who he described as “a good guy”. 

But moments later, Mcintosh would be slumped over his driver’s seat, dying from a gunshot wound to the head. Days later, Te Hiva Ka and his close friend from childhood, Ethan Dodds, who was responsible for the fatal shot, would be charged with Mcintosh’s murder. 

“I suppose I freezed up,” Te Hiva Ka said of realising about 20 seconds into the otherwise routine drug deal that his co-defendant had just climbed into the back seat of Mcintosh’s car with what police would later identify as a sawn-off semi-automatic rifle. 

“What the f***?” he recalled saying after the gun went off one time inside the car where all three sat. 

“I didn’t try to do anything. I was in shock, really. It all happened in an instant. The shot went off and ... the next thing you know I was out of the car.” 

Defence lawyer Ron Mansfield, KC, told jurors yesterday during an opening statement immediately prior to his client’s testimony that there was never a plan between the two co-defendants to rob Mcintosh of his drugs and money, as has been alleged by the Crown. 

“He didn’t know that there was a firearm and he didn’t know it might be used,” Mansfield said. “He just didn’t know. That’s the simplicity of the truth.” 

Julies Te Hiva Ka, Ethan Dodds and Tamirah Baker are co-defendants in the murder trial relating to the death of Ben McIntosh (background) in Glen Eden in June 2022. Photo / Dean Purcell 

Te Hiva Ka’s behaviour after the shooting, in which he left the scene without calling for help, was indicative of someone panicking, Mansfield added. He described his client’s drug addiction both as “a sad reflection of his then-lifestyle” and as a reason not to believe the Crown allegations. “Burning a relationship” with a dealer was not something someone so reliant on methamphetamine would contemplate, he suggested. 

• Crown alleges slain man's partner helped his killer
• Ethan Dodds, accused of murdering Ben Mcintosh, spends second day in witness box

Te Hiva Ka, who is referred to as Te Hivaka and by the street name “Pete East” in court documents, described Dodds as his cousin although not blood-related. “We were in car seats together - from there up,” he explained. 

His testimony incriminating Dodds as the shooter came after Dodds himself spent two days in the witness box admitting he was holding the gun when it discharged but insisting it fired by accident. Rather than a plan to rob Mcintosh of his drugs and money, he said he brought the gun as part of a half-cocked plan to “scare” him - getting revenge on behalf of another friend after hearing of an incident seven months earlier in which Mcintosh allegedly pulled a gun on the friend’s mother. He was convinced the gun was unloaded, he said. 

Te Hiva Ka said his friend looked pale and in shock as they fled the scene immediately after the shooting. He didn’t know at that time that Dodds had taken the victim’s bag containing his wallet and drugs, he said. 

But prosecutor Brett Tantrum was dubious of the claims of ignorance, repeatedly suggesting during cross-examination that Te Hiva Ka, Dodds and a third co-defendant, Mcintosh’s on-again-off-again girlfriend, Tamirah Baker, were planning an armed robbery. 

Tantrum noted that roughly 12 hours earlier Te Hiva Ka had already bought $200 worth of meth from Mcintosh at a West Auckland tavern even though he didn’t have steady employment. Neither Dodds nor Baker appeared to have money, Tantrum noted, suggesting it was unlikely they would have been able to scrounge up $350 more by the following morning. 

Te Hiva Ka said repeatedly the whole matter left him feeling “pretty s***” and feeling as if he was caught in the middle of something he wanted no part of. 

“On the one hand I’ve got a mate that’s been shot, I have another mate [Baker] that’s pretty distraught over it ... and then the core of it is my cousin,” he explained. “I’m torn left, right and centre.” 

But the Crown played recorded messages in the hours after the shooting in which his mood appeared much less remorseful than it did in the witness box. His quiet, well-spoken mannerisms in the courtroom were replaced with a rougher edge. 

“Me and the cuz have been actively active as f*** this morning,” he said in one message, which he acknowledged was to let a person unrelated to the case know he owed some money. 

“Aren’t you leaving the impression that you meant business - you and the cuz had shot someone that morning and you meant business?” Tantrum asked, to which the defendant answered no. 

His mood at that moment, Te Hiva Ka said, was “highly strung-out”. 

After Te Hiva Ka’s testimony, Baker was given a chance to call witnesses or testify herself. She declined. 

Closing addresses are expected tomorrow when the trial continues before Justice Graham Lang 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.