A party-goer has described the moment she felt a bullet pass her hand and watched her friend fall to the ground, fatally wounded.

Rawiri Zane Wharerau, 39, was killed, and his 41-year-old brother, Hemi, narrowly escaped the same fate after being shot at a party in the early hours of December 16, 2023.

The party, a surprise 50th birthday, was held at their home in Stokes Valley.

A couple, who also attended the party but have interim name suppression, deny charges of murder and attempted murder after Stokes Valley shootings. The woman also denies an additional charge of assault with a weapon.

Wharerau and the man now facing charges were both patched members of Mangu Kaha — a gang associated with Black Power.

Manawarangi Hori told the High Court at Wellington she arrived at the party at about 9 pm, after attending a work dinner in Wellington. She brought two boxes of vodka premixes with her, but didn’t drink them all. Patched gang members were present.

Hori told the court she spent most of the night sitting in one of two marquees erected for the party outside the house.

In the early hours of the morning, she said Wharerau called the man (who by this time had left with his partner after an argument with other partygoers) and told him to come back and “sort it out”. He’d seemed pissed off, she said.

Minutes later she’d heard the click of a gun loading and saw the gang member walking around the corner of the house holding what she thought was a semi-automatic.

She told the court Wharerau, who’d also heard it, got up from where he was sitting in the marquee and began running towards the sound.

She’d followed and they’d run towards the driveway.

“The next thing I saw was Tubs (Wharerau’s nickname) running back. As he was running back, I put my arm up and started running back and another shot was let off and it went past my hand,” she said.

Wharerau said he’d been hit, before falling to the ground. She’d begun CPR and called emergency services, who’d been unable to revive him and he was declared dead at the scene.

But Hori’s account was questioned by the man’s lawyer Rob Stevens.

He asked why Hori hadn’t mentioned the bullet passing her left hand in either of her two police statements in 2024 and 2025. She said the interview ended before she could and there wasn’t the opportunity to do so.

Hori then told the court the bullet had grazed her hand as it flew past. Again, she didn’t give this detail to police, but denied a suggestion by Stevens that she’d made it up.

When Stevens produced police photographs taken of her hands that night, she said the graze couldn’t be seen because it was on the side of her left hand. She added that the blood that was visible on her hands was from the bullet grazing her, not Wharerau’s blood from doing CPR, as Stevens suggested.

Stevens then put his version of events to Hori. He said after the phone call the man had returned to the house, stood by the fence and said “f*** yous guys are cheeky”.

She denied Stevens’ assertion that the man had fired a warning shot before the gun was loaded. He suggested a further two shots were fired as the group ran towards the driveway. A third shot then hit Rawiri prompting him to yell that he’d been hit.

Hori said the bullet that grazed her hand was fired when she and Rawiri were retreating back to the house.

Stevens also challenged Hori on how much she’d drunk that night. She agreed that she was too drunk to remember some things, including standing out on the street earlier in the evening - despite being shown footage that placed her there.

She did admit to police that she was oblivious to some things that happened that night, she’d told police she wasn’t “black out” drunk.

Hemi’s injuries life-threatening: doctor

Meanwhile, as Wharerau lay dying his brother Hemi was rushed to hospital with gunshot wounds. His admission records described him as “heavily intoxicated.”

Dr Alexander Brown, a surgeon at Wellington Hospital, operated on Hemi telling the court his injuries were “life-threatening”.

The court heard bullets were lodged in Hemi’s pelvis, buttock and calf. Doctors were able to remove the shot from the buttock and leg, but not his pelvis, because it was deemed too dangerous to do so.

Under cross examination from the woman’s lawyer, Letizea Ord, he agreed the cuts to the head, above the eyebrow, on the temple and earlobe were less serious, requiring some stitches and surgical “glue”.

The jury trial before Justice Dale La Hood is set down for five weeks.

Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice.