A MAN convicted over his role in the alleged kidnapping and torture of a woman at Mount Hutton in 2021 claims he heard the sound of a grinder starting up and ran into the back shed to see Kyna McAuley holding the power tool.
The alleged victim gave evidence last week during the trial of Ms McAuley and Madden Paynter, claiming she was detained for about 24 hours and tortured in the back shed of the home in Kestrel Avenue, during which she says her captors struck her with a hammer, poured boiling water on her head and burnt her with a cigarette.
The woman said she was terrified she was going to be killed and wet her pants when Mr Paynter allegedly pinned her down and held out her arm while Ms McAuley started a grinder and approached "as if she was going to cut off her arm".
"She had said: "take her arms off"," the alleged victim said of Ms McAuley. "I thought she was going to cut my arm off and I peed my pants, urinated in my pants because I was so scared. "[The grinder] was close and then all of a sudden it just stopped."
She was tied up, had her teeth knocked out and was repeatedly threatened with death, "a lobotomy" or to be injected with drugs before she was dumped near bushland at Eleebana, the jury has heard.
On Tuesday, the jury heard evidence from a man who pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to the kidnapping, who said he went in and out of the shed on May 5, 2021, while the woman was being detained and saw or heard her being struck in the face.
He said he later heard the sound of a grinder starting up and ran towards the shed.
"I ran out of the house into the shed," the man, who cannot be identified, said. "Kyna had a grinder in her hand. "[The alleged victim] had her hands up in front of her face. "She would have thought that Kyna was going to use the grinder towards her."
The man said he unplugged the grinder and threw it across the floor and said to Ms McAuley: "What are you thinking?"
Under cross-examination from defence barrister Russell Boyd, the man denied suggestions that he had struck the woman and that he was the one holding the grinder and advancing towards her.
The jury has heard the alleged kidnapping and assault stemmed from a minor car accident that the woman had while driving around the young daughter of Ms McAuley.
Ms McAuley was angry about the crash, the jury heard, and used a letterbox to smash up a car containing the woman when she returned from the police station.
She left but despite being warned not to go back to the house in Kestrel Avenue, the woman later walked from Merewether to Mount Hutton, let herself into the house and fell asleep.
She said she was woken by Ms McAuley striking her with a children's toy and ordering her to get up and go outside to the shed.
"I knew instantly I had made a mistake," the woman said during her evidence. "I should not have come here."
The trial continues.
