Kyle Whorrall trial: Attackers left American PhD student with 'catastrophic and ultimately fatal wound', Crown lawyer says

The only mistake an American PhD student made moments before he was fatally attacked was stopping at a bus stop, Crown lawyers say.

Kyle Whorrall, 33, was left with a "a catastrophic and ultimately fatal wound" following an attack in April 2025 at the stop in Auckland's Meadowbank.

He died in hospital shortly after.

The Crown said Whorrall was on his way back from a routine evening shopping trip when he was attacked with a machete.

Four teens have pleaded not guilty to his murder and aggravated robbery in the High Court at Auckland.

Jurors heard a fifth teenager had earlier pleaded guilty to both charges.

None of the young people involved can be named.

Crown lawyer Henry Steele was closing their case on Friday.

He told the jury the group had been driving up and down St Johns Road, coming up with a plan to rob Whorrall.

The car stopped and two people got out, Steele said.

"Two figures, one armed with a machete, both with a singular purpose, to rob," he said.

The group had seen Whorrall carrying two tote bags on his way home from the shops and made a plan to rob him, not knowing the bags only had groceries, Steele said.

He said Kyle Whorrall's only mistake that evening was stopping.

"They took his wallet and they left him with a catastrophic and ultimately fatal wound to the top of his head."

Steele said the teenagers left him dying with that wound, and "very much alone".

He told the jury using the machete was the foreseeable consequence of their plan to rob Whorrall.

"It was the one risk inherent in the possession of such a weapon," he said.

"Not that it would be used, but that it could well be used to cause serious injury in the course of the robbery."

Jurors had earlier been told the Crown did not have to prove who struck the fatal blow, only that those in the car knew what could have happened.

Defence earlier in the trial had pointed to the fact that after 18 months the Crown could not definitively say who struck the killing blow.

Steele told jurors he wouldn't spend his opening trying to convince them who that was.

"The question for you and the question I will address in the balance of this address is each of the four defendants' individual liability for what the Crown says was the entirely foreseeable consequence of their shared common purpose, the robbery of Mr Whorrall," he said.

The Crown prosecutor put five questions to the jury: who was in the car, why where they together, what did they know when the car stopped on St Johns Road, what did they do, and was it foreseeable.

Steele drew jurors' attention to the occupant in the car that night who had already pleaded guilty to Whorrall's robbery and murder.

The teen had an obvious and long-standing propensity for violent offending, going back to 2021, Steele said.

He turned to two other teenagers, represented by Panama Le'Au'Anae and Paul Borich KC, who he said shared those similar tendencies toward machete crime.

Steele said the three of those teens being in the car on that night was not coincidence.

"They're together to commit property crime, including the use of a machete," he said.

"We know there's a machete in the car and nobody is harvesting bananas."

He pointed to an incident roughly half an hour before the attack, where four of the teens allegedly tried to steal a motorbike from Elstree Avenue in Glen Innes.

"We know that these four or these five are not just out for a drive," he said.

"This is proof of concept when it comes to the broader intention of the group, to commit property crime, to steal."

Steele said the remaining two teens on trial, represented by Marie Taylor-Cyphers and Annabel Maxwell-Scott, did not share the same propensity as the other three.

"But what happens at Elstree Ave tells us they're in," Steele said.

"They're not just along for the ride."

Defence lawyers are expected to give their closing addresses later on.

The trial continues.