Coronial inquest into LynnMall attack completes first phase

RNZ News

13-06-2025

Ahamed Samsudeen coming out of the New Lynn train station, on the day of the attack on 3 September, 2021.
Photo:
Supplied
The first phase of the coronial inquest into the LynnMall attack four years ago has concluded in Auckland on Friday.
Ahamed Samsudeen was shot and killed by police, after stabbing four women and one man with a kitchen knife at a Countdown supermarket in Auckland's New Lynn.
Two others were injured trying to stop him.
Phase one of the inquiry began last week, with two more phases expected to sit later this year.
Samsudeen was granted refugee status in 2013, identified by the SIS as a terrorist threat in early 2017 and under surveillance at the time of the attack.
Coroner Marcus Elliott set out the path the inquest would take last year, ruling it would cover Samsudeen's path to extremism, his management in the community and what happened on the day he died.
In the first phase covering the day of the attack, the coroner heard from survivors, who
talked about their experiences and the impact the attack had on them
in the years since.
CCTV footage was examined frame by frame, with police staff providing evidence on tracking Samsudeen's movements and the actions taken by officers leading up to his shooting.
Giving closing statements, police counsel Alysha McClintock said the task of the coroner was a delicate one.
"In my submission, great, great care is needed with the precision of hindsight that we now have and with the precision of these stills we have been carefully working our way through," she said.
"We have to take great care in trying to analyse in the cold light of day, in this courtroom, that material and use it as a possible ability to essentially rewrite what should have happened. In my submission, that is very dangerous indeed."
Earlier in the day, the inquest heard officers had
no option but to use lethal force
, after failing to de-escalate the situation.
McClintock said questions around using a taser to subdue Samsudeen were obvious, but ultimately, that wouldn't have changed what happened.
"The evidence that has been given in this inquiry, in my submission, has made it clear that the carrying of a taser would have made no difference in this situation, given the risk presented by what Mr Samsudeen was doing at the critical time," McClintock said.
Representing officers involved in the attack, lawyer Todd Simmonds said their decision not to follow Ahamed Samsudeen into the supermarket that day was sound.
"It was, knowing what they knew at the time, an appropriate decision to make," he said.
Simmonds echoed McClintock's warning about hindsight.
He said surveillance officers were not equipped to follow Samsudeen into the supermarket.
"Even if they had followed Mr Samsudeen into the supermarket on the afternoon in question... they would not have been in a position to incapacitate Mr Samsudeen from his ongoing attack on members of the public," Simmonds said.
Simmonds asked Coroner Marcus Elliott to consider acknowledging the actions of police on the day in his findings.
Representing the interests of Ahamed Samsudeen's family, lawyer Fletcher Pilditch said the benefit of the coronial process was that the coroner wasn't bound to label something simply wrong or right.
"The court's not bound by those polar positions" he said. "The court's in the position where it can simply, calmly, with the benefit of a great deal of information, reflect upon the facts and invite those that were involved... in this incident to simply reflect on those facts and to invite consideration going forward.
"That can be done, as I say, without any criticism, without any second-guessing of the IPCA or the findings of justified use of force - it can simply be the presentation of facts."
Pilditch said earlier intervention could have made a difference.
"His window of opportunity to inflict harm was the very opportunity created by not being surveilled within that time," he said.
"The hard reality is that, if there had been an earlier intervention, a) no-one or less people may have been harmed, and b) Mr Samsudeen may well have found himself alone in the supermarket, but for armed [Special Tactic Group] officers.
Lead counsel assisting the coroner Anna Adams was the last to give a closing statement, recapping the facts of the case, the surveillance of Samsudeen, his radical terrorist ideas and interests, and his history.
She said Samsudeen's death affected many people.
"First of all, of course, Mr Samsudeen has loving, surviving family members, who live overseas and grieve his death.
"There are the survivors, there are the officers, people most affected by this phase of the inquest, but there are also, of course, Mr Samsudeen's lawyer, the people at the mosque where he stayed - they have all suffered trauma as a result of these events."
Coroner Marcus Elliott concluded the phase, thanking those who took part.
He acknowledged the profound personal consequences and harm suffered by so many due to the events leading up to and during the attack, before finishing with a karakia.
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