Warning: This article contains extremely distressing details that may disturb some people.
A court has heard one of the two people accused of torturing and killing an Auckland teenager changed her story to police.
Ashley Winter and Kerry Te Amo are accused of murdering 17-year-old Dimetrius Pairama at an abandoned state house before dumping her body in a steel drum on the property in July last year.
In one police interview, Winter said she had nothing to do with Pairama's death and was forced to watch the teen be beaten, burned and hanged by a man and two teenagers.
But in a second interview played to the court she admitted beating up Pairama because she spread rumours about her.
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In her first interview with police, Winter called Pairama her 'sister'.
"It's making me wanna hurt myself because my girl is gone," she said. "And I tried to save her - they wouldn't let me," she said.
Often leaving the interview room to be sick, Winter said she was threatened, and "too scared" to help.
"It's eating me inside, and I'm trying to hold my vomit down and my tears back," Winter said.
However, when she was arrested a week later, there were no tears - and an admission she beat up the teen because she "spread rumours about her".
"I was literally punching her in the face and kicking her in the guts and I just told her 'why you talking shit about us'," she said.
Winter then admitted she helped tie the teen to a chair, and taped up her mouth "coz she was crying, and I didn't want her to scream".
"We then left her for a bit and went back in the room, yeah we cut her hair. I helped cut her hair and shaved it with a razor blade as well," she said.
She told the detective she then saw the "boy" give Pairama "a really good hiding".
"He assaulted her real bad. He went in, starting punching her in the mouth and the ribs," she said. "All I could hear was echo, and I felt like things were broken on her."
Winter also admitted helping to make a noose out of a sheet.
"I was there, I had a part of it with the string and that. But one thing I didn't do is put it around her throat."
Winter then told police she stood back and watched 'them' kill Pairama.
"The boy then put her on the chair, and that noose he put around her neck," she said.
"He pulled the chair away. I dunno how long it was but it didn't take her long to die, and they left her there twitching."
Winter said she regretted what happened to Pairama, and wished she could wind back the clock.
"I feel sorry for this girl, and I wish it didn't happen to her. I feel sorry for her family, losing their daughter."
At one point the detective asked if Winter was the ringleader.
"We all did what we did. We listened to each other. There was no ringleader to any of this."
The trial continues.
Newshub.
