The moment his brother was allegedly fatally struck by a Mongrel Mob gang member in a brawl, Thomas Te Kani wished it was him instead.

“Why was it him,” Thomas asked after describing the incident to the jury in the High Court at Hamilton today.

His brother Mitchell Te Kani was allegedly killed after being struck to the side of the head with a crowbar and then falling back onto the concrete driveway during a brawl with Mongrel Mob members and associates in May 2022.

“He was right here, on my side, then he’s dropped to the ground.

“The fight just left me then.”

Thomas said he didn’t see what got swung but felt the air of it go past him.

“I just remember hearing it hit and then my bro fell.

“It was like slow motion.”

Thomas said he immediately “spun around and dropped and covered” his brother.

He said Kiri Pini, his former partner and mother of his children, then came over and grabbed his dreads and was “trying to rip them out”.

“All I remember ... I just wanted to die for my brother that night.”

10 counts of murder

Ten people are on now on trial charged with murdering Mitchell Te Kani in Tauranga and other assault and perverting justice charges.

Thomas explained to Crown Solicitor Duncan McWilliam that he was at the Welcome Bay Tavern with his cousin, Whetu Hika, and his partner, after a day’s hunting when he noticed a missed call from his 14-year-old daughter on the evening of May 14.

She called again and when he answered, she told him Pini was at the whānau homestead on Maungatapu Rd with “that Mongrel Mob guy”.

He told her to call the police.

He said Hika told him to get in the car and they headed home and pulled up to find Bodine Umuroa and Pini walking down the driveway holding his dog.

They put the car’s full beams on and jumped out.

“I asked him who he was and he said Mongrel Mob .... I smacked him. He had a patch on and that’s all that I remember.”

Umuroa was knocked to the ground and Thomas kept punching him as Umuroa’s head was jammed up against the bottom paling of the driveway’s fence. He said Pini pulled at his dreads to try and get him off him.

The fight eventually stopped and Thomas walked the pair to their car across the road before telling Umuroa, “let’s have a one ounce” - or one on one fight.

Umuroa responded by saying he was “going to get the Rogues”.

When asked by McWilliam what he meant by that, Thomas said, “That he’s a pussy”.

“He’s a coward ... you want to threaten my babies, here I am.”

The pair left, and he went back to the house where he said there was an “unsettling” feeling amongst everyone.

The brawl

Shortly afterward, he was outside and heard the carloads of Mongrel Mob come toward his house.

He said they then walked up the driveway barking and walked toward them near the top of the driveway to try and stop them going any further.

He asked who was in charge and said a bottle was thrown at his chest, which smashed.

The group then started spreading out and Thomas said he backed off, and told Mitchell to stay inside, while Hika was holding his pig dog nearby.

His father, Korau Te Kani, then came outside and asked them to leave. However, one of them stepped forward and allegedly hit Korau.

The court heard the fight escalated and Thomas was dragged forward and fell to the ground where his hoodie was pulled off. He managed to escape and ran and grabbed an axe from the wood pile, swinging it at the first person he came across.

Meanwhile, Thomas said his dog was “going for it” on someone’s leg, “he was opening up like he was bailing up a pig ... going hard on someone’s leg and then it’s almost like my cousin, Whetu, disappeared”.

“It was like a black wave swept over him.”

Thomas said he turned to his left, and saw his daughter’s boyfriend Isaiah Hewitt and Mitchell “fighting a wall of people” outside his father’s adjacent house before hearing Pini identify him to the mob.

“So they were fighting, there’s a wall of these home invaders over on the right-hand side.

“I can hear Kiri Pini say, ‘it’s him, it’s him, the one with no shirt on, get him’.

Meanwhile, he said Isaiah and Mitchell were fighting the group “with nowhere to go” as they were up against the house.

Asked how many Mongrel Mob there were by now, Thomas said, “like how the jury is”.

“We were just fighting, fighting for our lives and my brother, on the right hand side, he was closer to the garage door and I remember having to turn around and then hit someone that was holding his head down.

“We’re pretty much stuck along that wall now. I’m on the inside of him, and was getting attacked from all sides.

“My brother has come back to me. There’s fullas all along here now.

“As my brother has come back towards me I remember someone ... I didn’t see him, I just remember someone has come from this direction and swung whatever they swung and my brother has just dropped.

Then told the court he recalled Umuroa leaning over and saying something to him but he couldn’t recall what.

His oldest daughter, Mahura, then came over and sat with Mitchell as he went around checking on the rest of the whānau.

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Umuroa’s lawyer, Tony Rickard-Simms, put to him that he got “a few punches in” on his client during the fight in the driveway.

“I felt like he was a threat to my babies, so yeah ... you hear the terror in her voice.

“My baby was scared,” referring to when his 14-year-old daughter first called him about Pini and Umuroa being there.

Rickard-Simms put to him that he was lying about his client whispering something into his ear after his brother went down.

“I’m making none of this up,” he replied.

In questioning from Pini’s counsel, Andrew Schulze, about her involvement, Thomas said she was there at the end.

“She was cheering it on like a cheerleader on a rugby field.”

Max Simpkins, on behalf of Kevin Bailey, put to him that it was because of the two events, smashing Pini’s car windows two weeks earlier, and beating up Umuruoa 15 minutes beforehand, that the Mongrel Mob turned up at his house.

“Yes.”

The trial continues.

Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for nine years and has been a journalist for 20.