Tiffani Jade Sutcliffe asked if a shotgun was loaded before pulling the trigger and killing Rhys Gordon Williamson

The final anguished words Rhys Gordon Williamson uttered to Tiffani Jade Sutcliffe came just after she had shot him.

"Of course it's loaded, you stupid sl**."

It was the evening of Tuesday, May 30, and Sutcliffe, her flatmate Williamson and two others were in the bedroom of a house in Seddon St, Hamilton where, after consuming the illegal party drug GHB and numerous pre-mixed bourbons, a threesome was about to get under way.

DOMINIC ZAPATA/FAIRFAX NZ The house in Seddon St, Frankton, where Tiffani Jade Sutcliffe killed Rhys Gordon Williamson.

Williamson had entered the room holding a single-barrel, top break 12-gauge shotgun, which he and Sutcliffe began playing with.

She took the weapon from him pointed it directly at him and asked if it was loaded.

And then she pulled the trigger.

Standing just two metres away, Williamson, 40, took the full blast in the side of his chest, just underneath his armpit. After standing for a moment - and belatedly answering the question she had asked - he collapsed to the floor and died.

In the High Court in Hamilton on Tuesday morning Sutcliffe, 23, plead guilty to a charge of the manslaughter Williamson, by reckless discharge of a firearm.

The charge comes with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Sutcliffe - who appeared in court by audio-video link from prison - was remanded in further custody by Justice Sarah Katz for sentencing on November 23, who also issued Sutcliffe with a first strike warning for violent offenders.

An additional charge of unlawful possession of a firearm was withdrawn by the Crown.

The full details of the circumstances of Williamson's demise were revealed in an agreed summary of facts used in court.

Sutcliffe and her 20-year-old girlfriend had been drinking bourbons for most of that day in the Seddon St house when Williamson returned home from work late in the afternoon.

Williamson and Sutcliffe had known each other since she was nine years old, and were good friends.

Sometime shortly after 6pm another man - Anthony Brett Clegg, 40 - arrived, who had obtained the gun from an associate, along with a metal box containing shells, which were left on the kitchen table.

A female flatmate also arrived at the flat about 5.30pm, but left shortly after.

After spending some time in the lounge, Sutcliffe, her girlfriend and Clegg adjourned to a bedroom, with the intention of having group sex there.

Whether any sex occurred before the fatal shot was discharged is not recorded in the police summary of facts. The 20-year-old woman fled from the room and hid in a bathroom for a time, before Sutcliffe asked her to drive Clegg from the house to an unknown location.

After Williamson was shot, the gun was wrapped in a towel and concealed under a bush near the driveway outside the house. Sutcliffe dragged Williamson's body to the front step and called 111.

In an interview with the police the morning after the shooting, Sutcliffe was defiant, facing a video camera recording proceedings and extending her middle finger at it.

She also told the police the weapon used had been a makeshift pipe that had been fashioned into a firearm and it had discharged after the end of the pipe had been tapped with a hammer.

She told the police: "I'm pretty sure there is some malpractice bullshit here, aye. My bro died because you ....s f...d around getting here."

The police launched a manhunt for Clegg, who was eventually located and arrested.

Brought before the courts, the 40-year-old soon pleaded guilty to a single charge of unlawful possession of a firearm and, in August, he was jailed for two years.

Clegg had earlier this year been sentenced to 11 months in jail for other offending, and he had been released from jail just five weeks before the Seddon St incident happened.