A woman’s violent relationship with the man she’s accused of murdering allegedly included beatings where she thought she was going to die, and where her blood ended up on the walls of a family member’s house.

Ephron Ronaki says she never meant to kill her partner, Toku Manu Paul, when she and a car full of teenagers went to confront him over $500 she believed he had stolen. Paul was struck by the car twice and killed.

Ronaki and the teenage driver of the car, who cannot be named for legal reasons, are jointly charged with murder and are on trial in the High Court at Hamilton.

The 40-year-old gave evidence today about her relationship with Paul, saying he became violent a few months after they got together at the end of 2017.

She said a lot of the “hidings” weren’t “extreme”.

“[They] were just a black eye. Just punches or whatever,” she told her lawyer Caitlin Gentleman.

But other beatings had allegedly left her fearing for her life and retreating to family members’ houses.

He’d bitten her face, smashed her head into a concrete wall until she was unconscious, and beaten her at a family member’s house after which her blood had to be scrubbed off the wall, she said.

Friends and family urged her to end her relationship but she said she “didn’t know” why she kept going back to him.

A witness for the defence told the court that she’d seen the aftermath of the violence, witnessing some of Ronaki’s injuries, and had told her she was a “dumb b****” for staying with Paul.

“[Ronaki] said she loved him and apologised”, the witness said.

The pair had moved from Te Puke to Rotorua around 2020, and things had improved between them, but they returned to Te Puke for Christmas in 2022.

Paul and Ronaki had been drinking through the day and into the evening in late 2022. They began arguing over Ronaki’s suspicion that Paul had taken $500 she’d been gifted.

They had heated phone calls back and forth after they’d parted ways, and Ronaki asked where he was.

The court heard Ronaki, in a car full of teenagers, went to find and confront him over the missing money, and they spotted him on the side of the road.

Ronaki and Paul continued to scream at each other over speaker phone.

Passengers who were in the car told the court Paul began to bait them to run him over, and Ronaki encouraged the teenage driver of the car to “hit him”.

Ronaki said in evidence that Paul “[ran] onto the road”, before he was hit by the car.

The Crown alleges the teenage driver did a u-turn, and then ran him over again.

Ronaki said she had been screaming and grabbing at the steering wheel, and had wanted the driver to stop.

Under cross-examination, Ronaki was asked by Crown Prosecutor Marc Corlett KC if she’d instructed the teenager to run over Paul because of the violence he’d subjected her to.

“If that was the reason, it would have happened years ago,” she said.

Corlett asked her if she thought her partner deserved to die, because of the violent beatings.

“No way,” Ronaki said.

He put to Ronaki that she hadn’t been in any immediate danger at the time she’d enlisted the help of the teenagers to confront Paul, and she could have “dealt with the issue in the morning” when she had sobered up.

“Agreed,” she said.

But she said that she was worried Paul would use the money to buy methamphetamine, and “that’s where the danger comes”.

She said she never thought Paul would be hit by the car.

Under cross-examination she agreed she had been angry and drunk when she’d urged the driver to run down her partner, and was asked if, in that moment, she’d intended to hurt Paul.

“Probably would have... because I was too intoxicated to know what I was doing,” she said.

Corlett put to Ronaki that she’d made up the evidence about Paul “running” onto the road, as this was inconsistent with other evidence heard in court and in statements made to police.

She remained firm, denying she made up her evidence.

She said that after the first hit, she’d tried to grab the wheel and steer the car away from where Paul had been on the ground.

The car continued straight and hit him a second time, the court heard.

She agreed with the Crown’s proposition that she realised he had been seriously injured and had been worried about him.

Ronaki also faces a charge of perverting the course of justice after she allegedly made a false report to police straight after the incident that she was the driver of the car, in an attempt to stop the teenager facing prosecution.

The trial continues.

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.