Dunster Gives Evidence

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31237, 8 December 1966, Page 3

Dunster Gives Evidence

(New Zealand Press Association.'

AUCKLAND, December 7.

James Elwin David Dunster, aged 19, charged with murdering his mother, told a jury in the Supreme Court at Auckland today that the shotgun which killed her went off in his hand when he turned to “boot” his dog.

He said the dog had run into the livingroom of their flat in Herne Bay road, Ponsonby, and caught its tail in a heater as he carried the gun from the bedroom to give it to his mother. His mother had just before gone into the kitchen and he did not know she was back in the room until after the gun-blast when he saw her lying in a chair.

Dunster, an unemployed shop assistant and guitarist, walked across the floor of the Court in front of the jury holding the Beretta pumpaction shotgun in his left hand with a finger on the trigger to demonstrate his movements at the time his mother, Mrs Lyle Fraser Dunster, was killed on August 24. He said he could not be sure in which hand he held the gun. Dunster told the Court that he bought the gun at a sports goods store in Queen street

earlier the same morning Intending to use it to frighten his former fiancee whom he had seen walking hand-in-hand with a married man.

He paid £4O for it using money which he had drawn from the bank to give to the girl for her fare home to Australia.

Dunster said he wanted her to go there because she was making a fool of herself going out with the man and “she was cutting me up, too.”

Loaded Gun

After buying the gun he withdrew another £55 from the bank to give to the girl for her fare. Dunster said he did not intend to shoot the girl. After taking a taxi to Ponsonby, he thought it would “look stupid” if he unwrapped the gun in front of the girl to frighten her, and instead went home. There he took the gun into his bedroom because he did not want his mother to see it

“I was trying to think what I was going to do,” said Dunster. “I was scared at the time.”

He put one or two shells into the magazine to see how it worked and could not get them out.

Intending to telephone the shop to ask how it was done, he walked out of the bedroom and the gun went off in the hallway. “I was frightened. It was the biggest bang I have ever heard, I think,” said Dunster. The empty shell came out of the gun and he looked “underneath” where he had loaded it, and there were no more shells there.

His mother came running out of her bedroom to see what the noise was. “Stupid Idea” “I thought she would go mad at me for having the gun, but instead she just quietly asked me why I had it, and I explained I was going to frighten Janine," said Dunster.

“She said it was a stupid idea and that I would get into trouble if I did that.

“She started talking to me and I think I began -to see how stupid it really would be.”

He said his mother told him she would take the gun back to the shop and they would find another way of getting Janine Makuruk to go home. He went to his bedroom to fetch the gun and was walking back down the centre of the living room with it when the dog ran up to him. “I swung round and it caught its tail in the heater in the centre of the room. “I turned round to "boot’ the dog, I think, and the next minute the gun went off.

“I didn’t know why the gun had gone off. “As it went off, I turned round and Mum was lying back in the chair. “It was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. I just could not believe it.”

Dunster said that the next thing he recalled clearly was walking down the street in the rain. He was completely confused. “It was just like waking up from a bad dream. I could not understand any of it. I remembered my Mum getting shot and could not understand why it went off.”

Threw Gun Away

He said that as everything started to come back to him, he did not want the gun and threw it over a fence.

He decided to go to see a male nurse at Oakley Hospital because he thought he would understand.

He took a taxi to go to the hospital but first he wanted to go home and see what had happened. “Something made me go in. Mum was lying where she was before, and the dog was on top of her whimpering,” he said. “It just made me go mad. It was just like having seen it before. I bought some turpentine and was going to burn the place.” Asked by junior defence counsel, Mr M. D. Robinson, if he had any intention to shoot his mother, Dunster replied: “Of course not.” Mr D. S. Morris, for the Crown, asked in cross-exam-ination if this referred to the first or second shot that struck Mrs Dunster. Dunster: No shot. Mr Morris: At any stage did you go to see where you had hit your mother with the first shot? Dunster: I don’t remember.

Did you get a neighbour to assist?—No. I can’t understand why I didn’t. Did you put another cartridge in the gun? If you could tell me what my actions were, I would be a much happier person because I can’t remember.

Dunster agreed he would have had to go into the bedroom and reload the gun before firing a second shot at his mother.

Mr Morris: You did, in fact, pull the trigger again while the gun was pointing at your mother, did you not? Dunster: I must have done. Why did you do that?—l don’t know myself. Dunster said there was no struggle with his mother over the gun when it first went off, and he was not trying to frighten her to let him go to Miss Makuruk.

Mr Justice Hardie Boys asked Dunster if it was correct that in spite of the fact that the shot in the hallway had warned him of the danger of carrying a gun with a finger on the trigger, he had done the same thing two minutes later when he walked into the living room. Dunster: It was just the way I carried it.

The hearing will continue tomorrow.