A Perth woman has recalled the moment she was disturbed in the middle of the night, only to pull open her bedroom curtains and be confronted by a masked intruder who fired a sawn-off shotgun through the window, killing her partner.
Ralph Matthews-Cox, 47, died as a result of those wounds and the man accused of being responsible, Peter Nguyen-Ha, 34, is currently on trial charged with his murder.
The Supreme Court of WA.Credit: Erin Jonasson
On Tuesday, Matthews-Cox’s partner, Tammy Wallace, told a Supreme Court jury she heard a noise in the early hours of January 12, 2022, and peeled back the curtains of the bedroom window in her Landsdale home to see what caused the disturbance.
She said she came face-to-face with a man dressed in black and wearing a COVID-style mask, before screaming and stepping away from the window.
Police allege Nguyen-Ha then fired the shots, claiming he was looking for a man who had stolen thousands of dollars of drug money from him days earlier.
Nguyen-Ha denies the allegations.
At the start of the trial two weeks ago, prosecutor Beau Sertorio told the jury Matthews-Cox was shot mistakenly as Nguyen-Ha tried to enact revenge for the theft.
“The story of this trial doesn’t begin with the fatal shooting, it begins earlier with dangerous and deliberate choices,” Sertorio said.
“Choices rooted in the underworld of drug dealing.”
Sertorio told the jury Nguyen-Ha thought he was buying a large quantity of methamphetamine when he drove to a warehouse in Wangara on the night of December 30, 2021.
But it was a set-up, the prosecutor told the jury. Two men ambushed Nguyen-Ha, beat him up, and stole the large quantity of cash he had on him for the purchase.
The incident triggered a series of events that were driven by “significant antipathy” on the part of Nguyen-Ha towards the man who stole from him, Sertorio alleged.
“He intimidated occupants of houses where they thought he would be – to exact revenge or recover money that was stolen,” Sertorio told the jury.
The prosecution alleged Nguyen-Ha took part in four separate shootings across Perth in the days leading up to Matthews-Cox’s death.
Matthews-Cox had never met Nguyen-Ha, the court was told.
“Matthews-Cox had nothing to do with the drug deal or these men.
“[But] he was not the intended target of the shooting, neither was [his partner].
“The shooters were looking for someone else, and they got the wrong man.”
Nguyen-Ha’s defence lawyer Anthony Elliot told the jury his client was a drug user and sold drugs to support his habit, but claimed he was not responsible for shooting Matthews-Cox dead.
The trial continues.
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