“All hell broke loose” in a car the night a Bay of Plenty man was struck down twice - now a jury has the job of deciding whether the driver and front seat passenger had murderous intent or acted impulsively.

Ephron Ronaki says she never meant to kill her partner, Taku Manu Paul, when she and a car full of teenagers went to confront him over $500 she believed he had stolen.

Ephron, 40, and the teenage driver, who cannot be named, are jointly charged with murder and have been on trial in the High Court at Hamilton.

The jury was this afternoon sent out to begin its deliberations as to whether Ephron and the teen intended to kill Taku or whether it was an impulsive act in an “extremely stressful situation”.

Defence counsel and the Crown prosecutor delivered closing submissions yesterday, and this afternoon Justice Dale La Hood summed up the case before sending the jury out about 3.30pm.

Crown prosecutor Marc Corlett KC submitted most of what happened wasn’t disputed and largely came from the teen’s interview with police that night.

He asked the jury to look at how it all started, with Ephron upset with Taku for taking the $500, and then telling the teen she’d give him $200 if he helped get it back.

The pair then went driving around looking for Taku.

The pair were then on the phone to each other, yelling, before they saw Taku on the street.

He was yelling that they should hit him before Ephron told the teen to “run him over then”.

Taku was thrown over the windscreen and suffered a serious head injury on the road. The teen then performed a U-turn and struck him again, this time causing chest-crush injuries.

Marc says hitting Taku a second time, showed his intention to kill him.

‘Just wanted the arguing to stop’

Defence lawyer Ron Mansfield, KC, says the teen, who faces two charges of murder for each time Taku was struck, had a history of trauma and on the night acted impulsively without forethought in an extremely stressful situation.

He says “all hell broke loose” during the phone call in the car and the whole incident took about 1 minute and 14 seconds.

Ron says it would have been a “matter of seconds” between the teen seeing Taku and hitting him.

He had no motive to kill him and had told police he just wanted the arguing to stop and to go home, and was just acting “in the moment”.

The teen did not realise he would kill him and figured Taku might have to go to hospital.

He was simply a “traumatised teen put in a situation of extreme stress”, Ron says.

Teen brains were known not to be fully functioning at that stage of their life and known to use the emotional side, rather than the rational part of their brain.

The jury also couldn’t be sure that Taku was still alive when he was struck a second time, so his client should be found not guilty of a second murder charge, Ron says.

On behalf of Ephron, defence counsel Andrew Schulze, says when Ephron told the teen to “run [Taku] over”, it was an “empty threat” and never intended for the teen to carry it out.

She had also tried to grab the steering wheel before Taku was struck a second time, but the teen had a strong grip.

In evidence, she says she had no recollection of telling him to do that but had since accepted she must have.

She had also acted impulsively and without foresight due to her flight or fight response from her intoxication and PTSD after suffering earlier assaults at Taku’s hands.

‘Drunken intent is still intent’

Ephron is also defending a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice after telling police she was driving the car that night.

Marc submitted her police interview made it clear that she was trying to prevent the right person from being charged.

Andrew argued it wasn’t straightforward and she was still drunk when she gave her police interview.

Police also hadn’t cautioned her that she could be prosecuted for giving a false statement and she simply wanted to protect the teen.

Justice La Hood says while intoxication was relevant to her state of mind and could cloud someone’s judgment, “a drunken intent is still an intent for the purposes of the law”.