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The whānau of a man who was fatally shot by police was blamed for leaking court documents by a coroner, despite there being no evidence the whānau had done so.

In a major u-turn, the police watchdog has found constant, late-night checks on Shargin Stephens were unreasonable and may have contributed to him lashing out, before police fatally shot him.

In May 2021, Shona Brenssell and Dale Waitokia got word that Brenssell’s husband’s name had been cleared, and he was not responsible for causing the crash as police initially indicated, when Coroner Peter Ryan found it was unfair to say Wayne had contributed to the accident. The first coroner's report concluded that Wayne’s erratic driving – and more specifically, a braking manoeuvre – caused the crash. The pair had been employed by Calder Developments. Instead, Coroner Ryan put the crash down to four factors: a loss of structural integrity in the A-frame, which caused the concr...

Initial investigations suggested that a braking manoeuvre from Brenssell was the cause of the crash. After taking more evidence and expert opinion into account, Coroner Ryan found it was more likely the A-frame collapsed as they entered the bend, shifting the weight, and initiating the roll-over sequence. This is what their families believed had happened and why they kept pushing to change the initial finding. Kavinda Herath/Stuff Shona Brenssell, left, and Dale Waitokia have been fighting for answers about their husband's deaths since 2013. On Monday, they got the official Coroner’s fin...

Police have praised two Otago families for fighting for years to find out what caused a truck crash that killed two men.