A High Court jury in Christchurch has found Hayden Tasker guilty of murdering Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming, the Nelson police officer who was struck and killed by his car while on foot patrol in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2025. The same jury, which deliberated for three-and-a-half hours, also found Tasker guilty of intentionally causing grievous bodily harm to Senior Sergeant Adam Ramsay, who survived the attack.
The verdict was delivered on Monday before Justice Cameron Mander, ending three weeks of evidence at the High Court at Christchurch. Tasker, 33, had accepted from the outset that he was the driver of the Honda Odyssey that struck the two officers in Buxton Square shortly after 2am. He denied murderous intent and asked the jury to convict him of manslaughter instead, arguing that he had been attempting to take his own life when the vehicle hit the officers. The jury rejected that account.
According to evidence presented by Crown prosecutor Jackson Webber, Tasker accelerated his Honda Odyssey as hard as he could towards Fleming and Ramsay, reaching an estimated 45 kilometres an hour before impact. Fleming was thrown 20 metres. She was resuscitated at the scene and taken to Nelson Hospital, where she was placed on life support so her family could reach her bedside. She died soon afterwards. Webber told the jury Fleming had been “senselessly and needlessly” killed, according to coverage in RNZ.
Fleming had served in the Nelson police for 38 years and seven months. She was the first female officer in New Zealand to be killed in the line of duty.
Her son Aren Olsen spoke for the family after the verdict. “Nothing that has happened today will bring our mum, our partner, our sibling back to us. In that, I don’t think I can honestly say we have seen justice. But today we have seen accountability, and for that we are eternally grateful to the prosecution team, to everybody who did everything they could to get us the result that we’ve seen today,” he said in a statement reported by 1News. Olsen also described “sitting at mum’s bedside, watching the person you loved slowly slip away from the world” and said “the second hardest day has been every day since then”.
Fleming’s sister Jo Brown told reporters she had kept a promise to her late father to attend every day of the trial. “I fulfilled my promise to you, Dad, and we got the result you so desperately wanted,” she said in comments to RNZ. Brown described the manner of her sister’s death as “nothing short of barbaric” and said the family had spent three weeks listening to “horrendous evidence”. The Fleming siblings’ father died in February 2025, weeks after his daughter’s killing. The family said he had been heartbroken.
Adam Ramsay, who was struck alongside Fleming, has returned to police duty. He told reporters he was “deeply grateful” to colleagues and hospital staff who got him through his recovery and counted himself lucky still to be in uniform.
Police Commissioner Richard Chambers said the verdict did not change the loss the police family had carried since New Year’s Day 2025. The loss of Senior Sergeant Fleming “continues to feel raw for all”, he said. Deputy Commissioner Mike Pannett, speaking after court, said “there will never be a good ending for Lynn’s family” but acknowledged the jury had reached the right outcome on the evidence.
Buxton Square sits at the edge of central Nelson, a short walk from the city’s main police station. Foot patrols through the area were routine in the small hours after New Year’s Eve, when bars and gatherings in the city centre wound down. Fleming and Ramsay were on one such patrol when the Honda Odyssey accelerated from a stationary position and drove into them.
Tasker remains in custody. Sentencing is yet to be set. A conviction for murder in New Zealand carries a presumptive sentence of life imprisonment, with a minimum non-parole period that the High Court must fix. Because Fleming was a constable acting in the course of her duty, the case engages section 104 of the Sentencing Act 2002, which means Justice Mander will be required to consider a minimum term of 17 years unless he finds that would be manifestly unjust.
For the Nelson district, the verdict closes a court process that began on a public holiday and has run for much of the past 16 months. For Fleming’s family, it confirms what they have said throughout. The death of a 38-year veteran of the Nelson police, a mother, a grandmother and a sister, was not the result of a collision or a man who lost control of his vehicle. The jury found it was murder.
What are your thoughts on the verdict, the sentencing options the High Court will weigh, or the wider question of officer safety on routine foot patrols? Leave a comment below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
Leave a Reply