A murdered drug dealer tried to escape her captors but was forced back into a toolbox before being dumped in a Queensland creek, a court had been told.

February 6, 2020

A murdered drug dealer fought her way out of a toolbox but was caught and forced back in before being dumped in a creek, a Queensland court has been told.

Iuliana Triscaru and Cory Breton’s decomposing bodies were found in February 2016 after police dragged the large metal box from Scrubby Creek, south of Brisbane.

The pair had been lured to a unit in Kingston 18 days earlier and assaulted by a group of men after Mr Breton told a friend he had a photo of a fellow drug dealer on his phone, the Brisbane Supreme Court has heard.

Prosecutor David Meredith says this photo of Stou Daniels, who was giving the orders at the home, is central to the murder trial of Tuhirangi-Thomas Tahiata, 28.

Tahiata has pleaded not guilty to both murders.

But another drug dealer, Lelan Harrington, says Tahiata helped load the toolbox with the pair inside onto a ute and returned later saying “it’s done”.

In the hours before that, the pair was bound, gagged, bashed with a metal pole and knifed, Harrington said.

“There was blood on the floor. There was blood on the couch,” he told the jury.

The duo was then told to get inside the two-metre-long toolbox, he said.

“I remember when (Ms Triscaru) was trying to stop the lid from closing, Stou (Daniels) was slashing at her forearms with the knife that he stabbed Cory with.”

Harrington said at one point in the afternoon, Ms Triscaru fought her way out of the box but was pinned to the ground by two men in the unit.

“They put a zip tie around her hands and feet

“(One of the men) grabbed a zip line and tied it around her neck and she was coughing and choking on her own blood

“They picked her up, placed her in the toolbox and closed the lid,” he said.

Harrington said as the box was loaded onto the ute, blood flowed out of it.

“There was blood all the way out to the entrance,” he said

Later, Tahiata and a man named Trent Thrupp drove off with the toolbox, he said.

He next saw Tahiata later that night.

“He jumped out (of the ute), he had no shirt on and had mud splattered up his chest and said it was done,” he said.

The trial continues.