A gun enthusiast who went home and grabbed his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle after his pride was allegedly hurt during a melee at a South Auckland motel has been found guilty of murder.

Prosecutors said Corrdon Femitiai Vailoa Esera, 32, returned to the motel an hour later and lay in wait with co-defendant Ita Faataape until four men left the site squeezed into a Suzuki Swift. He admitted to opening fire in the direction of the compact car as it drove down Massey Rd in Māngere, with one of the four bullets that hit the vehicle going into the back of 19-year-old driver Misiona Talafu Petelo’s head. But it was never his intention to kill anyone, his lawyers argued.

Jurors returned the guilty verdict for Esera last night, hours after the High Court at Auckland usually closes. They had asked Justice Layne Harvey to continue deliberating past 5pm. Faatape, who was driving Esera’s ute as Esera opened fire, was acquitted of his murder charge.

Jurors had deliberated for about five hours, after spending all of Wednesday listening to closing addresses and all of yesterday morning listening to Justice Harvey’s summing up of the case.

The judge ordered Esera to return to court in July for sentencing.

Victim Talafu Petelo, who was also known by the first names Siose and Siaosi, had immigrated to New Zealand from Samoa in 2019. He had been raised in Samoa by his mother but that evening he was drinking with his father, who lived in Papatoetoe. Esera, meanwhile, was a furniture warehouse employee who was finishing up a 12-hour workday and was planning to cut loose with some co-workers at the Oakwood Manor motel when the men’s paths would cross.

Upon arriving at the motel, Esera encountered a tense situation involving the teen’s stepmother, who had been already visiting the same unit where Esera intended to socialise, authorities alleged. The woman, who had been drinking, became agitated and aggressive to people in a neighbouring unit and at some point turned her wrath towards Esera, possibly calling him a “pussy”, prosecutors had said.

The woman then called her husband to the motel, and Talafu Petelo also arrived. A fight broke out at the neighbour’s unit and police were called. While Esera was not involved in the fight, at some point one of the participants shouted, “Get a knife. I want to kill,” while motioning in the defendant’s direction, prosecutors said.

The combination of the woman’s insult and the threat of a knife enraged Esera enough that he decided to return to the site an hour later with the gun, authorities said.

During his closing address this week, Crown prosecutor ‘Aminiasi Kefu had described Esera as a gun enthusiast who knew the “power and danger” of the military-style rifle he chose to fire at the car. He attended a gun club, took part in shooting competitions and had extensive safety training about guns and gun storage, Kefu said, pointing out that during a search of his home after he turned himself in, police would find a single-bolt rifle, an air gun, rounds of ammunition, scopes and gun cases.

His decision to open fire wasn’t an act of self-defence or a scare tactic gone wrong, Kefu told the jury, but a plan Esera “considered, prepared for and executed”.

He said Esera’s murderous intent was evident in the number of shots he fired at a full car, his knowledge of guns, and the preparation that went into the shooting.

“The result of the four shots speaks for themselves,” Kefu said as he addressed the jury for four hours. “Actions speak louder than words.”

Esera’s lawyer, Graeme Newell, acknowledged during his closing address that his client should be found guilty of something, but he said it should be manslaughter, which reflects an unintentional killing that occurs during an unlawful act like threatening someone with a gun. To find a person guilty of murder, jurors have to determine there was murderous intent.

Newell said Esera had merely wanted to scare the group and stop them from returning to the motel to cause trouble. There had been violence, threats to kill and to use a knife at the property, which had caused fear, he said.

“He had no reason to intend to kill or injure anyone,” Newell said.

Prosecutors argued co-defendant Faataape should be found guilty of murder as well because he was a party to the shooting, knowing Esera’s intention and choosing to help anyway by getting in the driver’s seat.

Esera had initially asked another friend to drive him, saying, “Someone pulled a knife on me,” but that friend was not available so he went to Faataape, the court heard.

Faataape’s claim he did not know Esera had a gun and was forced to drive his friend out of fear were lies, prosecutors argued, saying the rifle was nearly a metre long and difficult to conceal.

But there was no evidence Faataape knew what Esera was going to do or saw the rifle until it was too late, defence lawyer Kelly-Ann Stoikoff countered in her closing address.

She said Faataape had tried to drive the car away from the Suzuki Swift as quickly as he could once he grasped the situation.

The Crown case rested entirely on “must haves”, he argued.

“You have to be sure Faataape knew what was on Esera’s mind, that he assisted to kill by following [the targeted car] so Esera could shoot, that he gave Esera time to do it,” she told the jury.

“The only safe and just verdict is not guilty.”

The murder trial was the second one to conclude in the High Court at Auckland yesterday, with jurors in an adjoining courtroom returning their verdicts just hours earlier in a case similarly centring on murderous intent and whether the admitted shooter should be found guilty of manslaughter or murder.

In the other case, Dylan Harris was instead found guilty of manslaughter after having tearfully admitted in the witness box to having fatally shot an intended robbery victim in the head at close range during a days-long methamphetamine binge. While he meant to intimidate drug dealer Robert “Robbie” Hart with the gun during the “standover”, he at no point intended to pull the trigger, he said, describing the shooting as a horrific accident.

Co-defendants Adam North and Jasmine Murray were also found guilty of manslaughter for having aided Harris in the standover by luring the victim to the fake drug deal using a stolen phone and another person’s Facebook account.

- Craig Kapitan and Qiuyi Tan, NZH