A shooting victim was warned a man was "going to whack" him a short time before he took a bullet to the face and ended up in a coma for a week, a court has heard.
Sugimatatihuna Mena, the man alleged to have shot the victim in the jaw, forearm and stomach, went on trial in the ACT Supreme Court on Tuesday.
The 24-year-old has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder, intentionally inflicting grievous bodily harm and discharging a firearm in an act endangering life.
He and his co-accused, Bradley Joe Roberts, 24, and Rebecca Dulcie Parlov, 25, have all denied an aggravated burglary charge stemming from the same incident in March last year.
In his opening address to a jury of 14, Crown prosecutor Trent Hickey said Roberts had attended a planned meeting with a woman, who cannot be named, in a Canberra car park early on the morning in question.
Mr Hickey said Roberts had recognised the victim, who was with the woman at the time.
"[Roberts] said 'Sugi' was going to whack him, or have a punch-on, because there was a rumour that [the victim] was a 'kiddie fiddler'," the prosecutor told jurors.
Mr Hickey said during the hours that followed, Parlov sent the unidentifiable woman a number of Facebook messages using her own account and that of Roberts.
He told jurors the woman who cannot be named had returned to her Spence home with the victim by the time she told Parlov, in a phone call, that he was "a good bloke" and "not a kiddie fiddler".
But Mr Hickey said the woman's attempts to persuade Parlov that a confrontation "didn't need to happen" fell on deaf ears.
Parlov and Roberts turned up, the prosecutor said, "barged in" and headed for the kitchen area.
He said Parlov "got up in [the victim's] face", prompting the fearful man to arm himself with a knife.
Mena then entered the fray, according to Mr Hickey, who said the alleged gunman pulled a sawn-off .22 rifle out of his pants and shot the victim in the stomach.
The prosecutor said the victim also suffered a gunshot wound to the forearm, but it was unclear if this was the result of another shot or whether it occurred as the injured man tried to protect himself.
But Mr Hickey told jurors that whatever the case may have been, Mena then reloaded, raised the rifle again and shot the victim in the jaw.
He said the intruders subsequently fled the home and the bleeding victim crawled to the bathroom, before contacting someone who came and drove him to Calvary Hospital.
The victim told hospital staff he had been shot with a .22 rifle and not to tell the police, Mr Hickey said, adding that the man, whose injuries were initially considered life-threatening, had to be intubated.
Jurors heard the victim was placed in a coma and transferred to Canberra Hospital, where he underwent a number of surgical procedures and spent the next week.
Police later spoke to him and the woman who cannot be named, and Mr Hickey said the pair would be the first witnesses called to give evidence in the trial.
In brief opening remarks, defence barristers for the accused told jurors to carefully consider the credibility of the two key witnesses.
James Sabharwal, representing Mena, urged particular consideration of the evidence said to identify his client as the shooter.
"How many times have you thought you recognised someone in the mall, only to realise later you were mistaken?" he asked jurors.
Keegan Lee, acting for Parlov, said the issues in dispute included who was at the Spence house and why.
"There was much more going on that night," he said.
Mr Lee told jurors to pay attention to the actions of the woman who cannot be named, which included cleaning up the crime scene after the shooting.
Mary Keaney, on behalf of Roberts, said the jury would not hear "any reliable evidence" that her client was at the scene, nor that he had the intent necessary to commit the offence with which he is charged.
The trial, which has an estimate of seven days, continues before Justice Chrissa Loukas-Karlsson on Wednesday.
