Shooting victim in Adelaide Hills attempted murder case had to ‘get away or fight back’, jury hears
The survivor of a shooting has told a jury of his fight or flight reflex, grabbing the nearest tool to defend himself against the alleged attacker.
A shooting victim who feared he was going to die has described how he fought back against his attacker, reaching for a small axe and swinging it at his attacker’s head, a jury has heard.
The victim, 26, who cannot be named for legal reasons, began giving evidence in a Supreme Court trial on Tuesday.
The court has previously heard the men were embroiled in a love triangle with a woman — the accused’s former partner and the victim’s work colleague and new lover.
“Either I had to get away or I had to fight,” the victim told the jury.
But, with a bleeding bullet wound to his abdomen and a shattered pelvis, he could only crawl.
“I decided I had to fight and look for something I could fight with,” he said.
When his attacker turned around, allegedly to reload the Winchester Model 70 bolt-action repeater rifle, the victim grabbed the handle of a tool to his right, not realising it was a small hatchet.
“I thought, great, something heavy … managed to basically get myself up and pushed myself up,” he said.
“All that came into my head was: ‘You dead? Dead? You need to get up. You’ve got to get up, you’ve got to fight … you can’t take his leg, you’ve got to get him on the head’,” he said.
He feared if he was unable to get up the accused was going to “shrug it off” and kill him
“I got myself up and managed to get a swing at him,” he said.
He said the accused then fell to the ground but tried to get up so he kept swinging the hatchet, still unaware that was the tool in his hand.
“I knew if he got back up that was the end of me,” he said.
He said he then “lost all energy” and was unable to keep fighting.
His alleged attacker, who also cannot be named, is charged with one count of attempted murder over the incident in a garage at Littlehampton in October, 2017. The accused, 32, of Northfield was rendered a tetraplegic from injuries sustained in the attack, and is now wheelchair bound.
The victim, who now lives interstate, had been living with the former couple until the accused moved out months earlier, in mid 2017. Some of the accused’s belongings, including a gun safe with five firearms, were still stored in the garage.
The victim said the accused had invited him into the garage to look at his gun collection, as he had similarly done two days earlier.
But, he said the accused “didn’t want to engage”, brushing his questions off with “yeah, sure dude”.
The victim told the jury the accused took out a bolt action rifle, and began pointing out different features of it.
“At one point it was very close to my head and I sort of pushed it away because I wasn’t very comfortable with that,” he said.
Soon after he said the gun was “pointed directly at my centre”.
“I looked up and he stopped talking, he was starting at me very intensely, not saying a word,” the victim said.
He said he went to push the gun away, but the accused “fired the gun at me” and the victim “took a bullet to the gut”.
“I went to the floor on my knees,” he said.
He said he initially thought it was an accident, until he looked up.
“He was standing over me … just looking at me, didn’t offer any help,” he said.
“He just said he was going to kill me, going to kill (the woman).”
He said the accused then turned around still holding the gun, and he knew he had to defend himself.
Opening the trial on Monday, prosecutor Lucy Boord said the woman went into the garage after hearing a gunshot and found the two men on the ground with “blood everywhere”. She dialled triple-0.
The trial, before Justice Anne Bampton and a jury of six men and six women, is expected to last four weeks.