A former bakery owner is alleged to have deliberately run down a “rough little guy”, who often slept on the tables in front of their store, after he threw a metal bin liner at his wife’s ute.

The incident that led to the alleged run-in was captured on CCTV, but the jury in the Tauranga District Court trial will not hear from complainant Duane Jackison, as he has since died in unrelated circumstances.

The CCTV shows Jackison in the middle of the main road in Whangamatā, and as a ute avoids him, he is seen to throw a metal bin liner at the side of the truck.

That ute was driven by bakery owner Christine Henderson, and the Crown alleges her husband, Leslie “Brett” Henderson, after hearing about the incident, drove back and deliberately struck Jackison with the ute, causing him broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and lacerations.

However, Brett Henderson is defending the charge of assault with a weapon, represented by prominent lawyer Philip Morgan, KC.

Morgan told the jury, in his opening statement, that while it’s accepted that there was an impact, Brett Henderson did not intend to hit Jackison and it was an “accident”.

‘I was freaking out’

The events all took place in the early hours of a winter morning on the main street of Whangamatā.

Christine Henderson, who has been married to Brett Henderson for 41 years, had been heading to the Port Rd Bakery in her black Isuzu D-Max ute.

The couple had owned the bakery for just over 20 years, but it’s since been sold.

Brett Henderson would get to the bakery at 3am, his wife would join him at 4am and they would busy themselves getting bread in the oven and pies warmed, before the first customers began arriving from 4.30am.

But on August 4, 2023, Christine Henderson’s usual drive to work included an incident that left her “in a panic”.

As she drove through the beachside town, she thought she saw a rubbish man carrying a bin and plastic liner.

However, as she got closer, she recognised Duane Jackison, a local man she claimed at the trial as being known to be “not quite right”.

She said he was in the middle of the road, looking at her with an “angry, ugly face”, and she swerved to the right to avoid him.

She had thought the metal bin liner was going to “come straight through the windscreen”.

As she drove around him, he struck the side of her ute with the metal bin, causing scratches to the side of the Isuzu.

She said she “carried on driving towards the bakery ... wasn’t stopping for that” and drove to the rear of the building, tooting the horn to get her husband’s attention.

“I wanted him right now, I was freaking out,” she said.

When Brett Henderson came out, she said she told him, “Duane is losing the plot”, and he should speak to him to “try and calm him down”.

When cross-examined by Morgan, she said her typical previous interactions with Jackison had been calm, describing him as a “rough little guy” who would sometimes sleep on the tables in front of their bakery.

They would give him a “sandwich or something from the day before” and she said he was usually grateful and polite.

But on this morning, after the “upsetting” incident, Brett Brett Henderson hopped into the Isuzu and headed along Port Rd to find Jackison.

The Crown case is that Henderson was angry with Jackison and “wanted to teach him a lesson”.

The trial is underway at the Tauranga District Court.

Crown prosecutor Molly Tutton-Harris said, in her opening address, Brett Henderson drove quickly up the street, before he deliberately “swerved towards [Jackison], hitting him with his SUV”.

Brett Henderson returned to the bakery and called the police to report the damage Jackison had caused when he struck the vehicle with the metal bin liner.

Police arrested Jackison for suspected wilful damage – he had also allegedly smashed a retailer’s window – but he started to complain of breathing difficulties.

As he was being attended to by ambulance officers, Senior Constable Fraser Simpson heard him say he had been hit by a car.

This was the first time Jackison had mentioned this, and Simpson said that while he was still a suspect for the wilful damage, he was also now being considered a victim, for potentially being hit with a vehicle.

CCTV footage and a question of intention

In CCTV footage shown to the jury, the dark streets of Whangamatā appear mostly deserted.

The street lights are on, and at points, Jackison can be seen walking around on his own, carrying the metal bin liner and at times tossing it around.

The CCTV footage of both the incident and the lead-up is piecemeal – different angles, from different businesses, showing fragments of a timeline of events that all took place in semi-darkness.

But the defence case doesn’t centre on whether or not Jackison was hit by Henderson’s car – that is accepted.

Morgan said the real question is not what happened, but how it happened.

He said Brett Henderson did not “run down” Jackison. He said he went back to see “what the hell was going on”, and Jackison was again in the middle of the road. Brett Henderson tried to swerve and brake to avoid him, but Jackison was hit.

It may have been an error of judgement to swerve right, not left, but it was “an accident”, not a deliberate “assault with a weapon”.

Brett Henderson chose to give evidence and said he had been going to look for Jackison, as his wife was worried for the safety of friends who often went walking early in the morning.

As he was driving, he caught a glimpse of Jackison out of the corner of his right eye.

He said he braked and turned the car right, towards Jackison, so he could “turn [his] lights on him”.

In hindsight, he accepts he should have turned left, but it had all happened quickly. He was worried Jackison was going to throw the metal bin liner, which he said he was holding up, into his driver’s window.

He braked as he turned, but Jackison, and the metal bin, hit the bonnet of the car and “rolled off”.

He denied hitting him; he said they “ran into each other”, and he would not have used an $80,000 car as a “battering ram”.

Brett Henderson said Jackison got up, and as he got out of his car, Jackison had come towards him “ranting and raving”, so he threw him to the ground.

Crown Solicitor Anna Pollett asked him if he had been upset, cross, agitated or annoyed when he made a decision to leave his pies cooking in the ovens, to go and “talk” to Jackison about the incident.

He said he wasn’t; he had just wanted to have a “man-to-man” conversation, to understand why Jackison had “attacked” his wife.

“You don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” he said, adding he’d hoped that he could talk to Jackison, and then, in a “perfect world”, get him to apologise to his wife.

Pollett asked why he hadn’t just called 111, instead of “taking matters into [his] own hands”.

Brett Henderson said calling 111 “didn’t work”, though he accepted that after the incident, he did call 111.

The trial before Judge David Cameron is expected to conclude on Thursday.

Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.