Kyle Whorrall trial: Four teens found guilty of manslaughter and aggravated robbery

Four teens have been found guilty of manslaughter and aggravated robbery over the death of American PhD student Kyle Whorrall.The four teens have been on trial at the High Court in Auckland for the past three weeks after pleading not guilty to murder and aggravated robbery.A fifth teen had pleaded guilty to murder and aggravated robbery before the trial.A jury found the four teens were not guilty of murder, but were guilty of manslaughter and aggravated robbery.Whorrall was killed during a robbery at a bus stop in Auckland's Meadowbank on 19 April 2025.Jurors had much to consider when they began deliberations at 3:20pm Wednesday.Each of the four defendants faced two charges, murder and aggravated robbery, and each of those charges had three possible verdicts including lesser convictions for manslaughter and robbery, respectively.Justice Simon Mount warned jurors against "guilt by association," and urged them to take their time and consider each of the defendants and their charges separately.Crown lawyer Henry Steele told the jury during his closing arguments that the group of teens had been driving up and down St Johns Road for about 5 minutes, coming up with a plan to rob Whorrall.Two of them stepped out of the car, one armed with a machete, he said."They took his wallet and they left him with a catastrophic and ultimately fatal wound to the top of his head," Steele said.He argued it was "obvious to each and every of the five occupants" that the machete could have been used in this way.Paul Borich KC, acting for one of the defendants, said there was no evidence identifying that his client, nor any other specific defendant, was the second person to exit the car."There are good, legitimate arguments for all of the four persons who are on trial who could fit into that number two slot, and it depends on the parts of [the evidence] you like and the parts you don't like," he said.Borich's client and another teen represented by Panama Le'Au'Anae had a "propensity" for robbery with a machete, the Crown argued.But Le'Au'Anae's client had not admitted to being inside the car, with the Crown placing him at the scene based on location data from his phone.The two other boys, represented by Annabel Maxwell-Scott and Marie Taylor-Cyphers, didn't share the same propensity as Borich and Le'Au'Anae's clients, the Crown said.Maxwell-Scott strongly disputed that her client was part of the plan to rob Whorrall and said the use of the machete was a spur of the moment decision by the fifth teen, who had already been convicted.She said her client couldn't have been the second person who left the car, because eyewitness evidence suggested that person was shorter, while her client was taller.