The police officer that narrowly escaped losing his life the day that Constable Matthew Hunt was murdered has told a court he “thought [he] was going to die”.
Constable David Goldfinch was shot at 10 times by Eli Epiha with a military-style assault rifle on June 19 last year.
Four bullets hit him; one striking his hip, two going through his leg and another hitting his boot.
Constable David Goldfinch was shot at 10 times by Eli Epiha with a military-style assault rifle last year. (Source: Other)
Epiha, 25, who’s admitted murdering Constable Hunt, is on trial at the High Court in Auckland for the attempted murder of Constable Goldfinch.
Constable Goldfinch was the first to get out of the car and come face to face with the killer that day.
He described the “cat and mouse chase” that played out as he tried to dodge bullets.
It’s the first time Constable Goldfinch has spoken since the fatal shooting in the West Auckland suburb of Massey.
“I had this flash like 'this is where I die'," Constable Goldfinch told the court.
He recounted his memories of the day, starting with when he first saw Epiha driving “way too fast” into an intersection.
Constables Goldfinch and Hunt were on traffic duty that day, and the dark purple Toyota Epiha was driving caught their attention.
“We went 'whoa… that's some pretty poor driving'."
Goldfinch saw the vehicle registration was flagged in the police system with a low level alert, and noticed the man at the wheel wasn’t the registered driver, so the officers decided to pull him over for a chat.
A jury at the High Court in Auckland played audio of shots being fired by Eli Epiha as he murdered Constable Matthew Hunt. (Source: Other)
“We saw it going up the hill… at an incredible rate of knots and it was just a moment when we said to each other this is trying to get away from us”.
The lost sight of it fairly quickly, but soon came across a crash.
“There was just smoke and debris all over the road,” Constable Goldfinch told the court.
“I said to Matt, 'whoa, he’s crashed'.”
“Because the smoke was so thick, Matt had to slow to a crawl.”
He said, “The last I saw of Matt, he put the car in park and I jumped out”.
Constable Goldfinch thought the crash was so bad that he was going to need to provide first aid to the driver.
“I thought maybe I was going to find an injured driver slumped over the steering wheel”, the jury heard.
Eli Epiha and Natalie Bracken are seen driving away as Constable Hunt’s body lies on the road. (Source: Other)
But after taking a few steps, he saw Epiha coming around the car, armed.
“He was walking towards me… he was holding a firearm”, he recalled.
“His right hand was around the trigger.”
“I said f*****g stop bro, put the f*****g gun down.”
“He just pointed the firearm at me… and started pulling the trigger, firing bullets at me.”
Constable Goldfinch recounted how, at that point, he just ran for it.
“We’re trained in police that the only thing that will stop a firearm of that calibre is an engine block… I got behind a vehicle”.
He said it was like “cat and mouse”, with Epiha “trying to get a clean shot” at him.
“It was kind of a surreal moment. We just looked at each other. I put up my hands… and just went ‘f*****g stop, f*****g walk away. I won’t arrest you’.”
He recalls the shooter considered that option, but soon, he saw a shift.
“It was like, he thought, I’ve made a decision, I’m gonna kill ya”, Constable Goldfinch told the court.
He said Epiha lifted the rifle up, pointing over the car, and “started popping shots”.
The defendant had eyebrows raised and appeared to be smirking in the dock as Constable Goldfinch described that moment.
At that point Constable Goldfinch decided to make a dash for it.
As he ran, he said, “I looked back, he was just… a couple metres away from me. He just had the firearm pointed straight at me, he pushed it forward towards me”.
At that moment, he believed he was about to die.
“I saw the flash of the gun,” he said, “I don’t know how the bullet missed”.
He believed it hit the ground, creating a hot shower of shrapnel. He felt his arms and face burning.
“I felt one [bullet] into my hip. It felt like an explosion of acid through my belt."
More bullets hit, and with them, the same pain, “of someone throwing a bomb of acid at you”.
He ran for his life, behind other cars and eventually to the back of property.
“I got to the backyard and I took a knee. Cause my knee was incredibly sore. I was bleeding a lot”.
“I could see the holes in my leg. There was blood everywhere.”
“I didn’t know where Matt was,” he said, “I didn’t know where the offender had gone”.
As he paused at the back of a Reynella Drive property, he saw the shooter coming down the driveway, talking with others, including a female he’d seen earlier, watching on the road.
Goldfinch said he could hear part of their conversation quite clearly.
“It was just a casual chat…” he said, “[Epiha] said something to [the woman], she sort of taped her pants and said ‘I got no keys on me bro’.”
At around that moment the Constable told the court his radio went off, catching the gunman’s attention.
“We made eye contact again”, he said, adding that Epiha then seemed to take a step in his direction.
“I said to comms I’ve got to go, he’s hunting me or following me or something.”
Goldfinch said he then jumped over a fence, and ran through several properties, all the while in severe pain.
He got to another road and was running towards some street signs, so he could pass on his location, when some members of the public stopped to help.
At that point, he said, “I’d lost a lot of blood, I started to lose feeling in my hands… I thought I was going to die”.
“I still didn’t know where Matt was,” he told the court.
He said that he was hoping he’d got away.
A 12-person jury is tasked with determining if Epiha’s guilty of attempting to murder Constable Goldfinch.
They must also decide if 31-year-old Natalie Bracken was an accessory after the fact of murder, allegedly helping the killer avoid arrest.
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