Lyn Fleming murder accused: 'It should have been me that died'

"It should have been me that died, it's what I wanted."

Those were the words from alleged cop killer Hayden Tasker, less than 12 hours after he fatally struck Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming with his car.

By Mason Herbert and Laura James

The incident unfolded in Nelson’s Buxton Square in the early hours of New Year’s morning 2025.

The 33-year-old is on trial at the High Court in Christchurch, charged with murdering Fleming and intentionally causing grievous body harm to another officer – Senior Sergeant Adam Ramsay.

The two officers were on foot patrol at the time, monitoring the busy CBD as revellers celebrated the start of the New Year.

The accused’s formal police interview was played for the jury today.

In it, Tasker was informed by Detective Nathan Madden of the charges he would face – including one of murder.

When accused hears that, he asked: “Did they die?”

Shortly after, he was seen and heard crying, asking to call his family.

The video shows him with his head in his hands looking down at the floor, multiple times.

“It's a lot for me to take in,” he relayed, emotively, to the detective.

“I didn't realise one of your officers died... it really has affected me.”

“All I can say is that I'm sorry to the family.”

He said no one should ever have to be killed on the job, admitting he had “punished” a family “in the worst possible way”.

The Crown case was that Tasker was angry with police that night – something he admitted to them – so he intentionally aimed to hit the officers, knowing they could die.

But the defence case is he was planning on killing himself on New Year’s morning by causing a high-speed police chase and crashing. Tasker said he’d put 40 litres of petrol in his car and would have made it to Christchurch.

“Was just gonna like ram into some cops and then they would start chasing me but then I would get away kind of like on a movie,” he said in his interview.

“My intention was that they would get away and then they would start chasing me,” he reiterated.

He referred to his suicide intentions at multiple points in the police video, explaining how he lost his father at the age of 16 and his life hadn’t been the same since.

He wanted to die and be reunited with him.

“My life got torn apart at 16 and I've never recovered."

Tasker said he’d basically been homeless since that time and had been rejected by his home-town of Motueka.

He claimed he was living in his car, and couldn’t get a job.

“[My dad’s] probably looking down on me now, like, 'what have you done, Hayden?'

"One bad day changes my whole life forever.”

He suggested he was also triggered by seeing his ex-girlfriend with someone else the day before.

“I just wanted to end it for myself, more than anything, so then I didn't have to go to the suffering, the pain of just every time I’d see her,” he told the detective.

Tasker requested a break during questioning, advising the detective he felt ill. Once the officer left the room to retrieve some water, Tasker vomited into a bucket.

He accepted his mental health and personal circumstances didn’t make what he’d done in Buxton Square right.

“I just have to take one day at a time the next few days, and just pray that the people that I’ve injured can pull through,” he said.

“I would never have thought I’d ever kill someone.”

He called it a “stupid mistake” and a “complete accident”.

He was three times over the legal alcohol limit when he was tested following the incident and claimed he didn’t think his actions through.

“The alcohol, it brings the demon out,” he said.

“I didn't really think about the consequences because I was pretty drunk. I knew that they'd be bad.

“If I wasn't drinking, I would never have done it,” he added.

But he acknowledged, because of him, “it’s not a happy New Year”.

This was not the first time Tasker had been accused of using his car as a weapon.

Crown prosecutor Jackson Webber today shared details of the accused's previous conviction, following an incident in 2020.

He'd been boarding with a paraplegic man, and the pair had fallen out.

"The defendant drove towards the victim, hitting him in his wheelchair… causing the wheelchair to flip over onto its side and the victim to come out of the chair.

"The victim crawled his way up the curb, over the footpath and behind a concrete fence.

"The defendant drove at the victim again and struck the fence with his vehicle," Webber said.

Tasker pleaded guilty and was convicted of assault using a vehicle as a weapon.

In the Crown's opening address last week, it addressed the prior offending – telling the jury: "If you accept that this evidence establishes that propensity, then it is evidence you can take into account in relation to deciding with the defendant intentionally drove his vehicle into the two police officers.

"The Crown case is that this tendency on the part of Mr Tasker makes it more likely that he deliberately or intentionally drove into the police officers."

Justice Mander, presiding over the trial, will direct the jury as to how it might legitimately use that evidence and – importantly, how it must not use that evidence – when he sums up next week.