4.40pm UPDATE
A High Court judge today called for urgent support to help young Chinese students cope with life in New Zealand as she sentenced a man for double murder and an attempted murder.
Wen Hui Cui, 23, was found guilty of murdering his estranged girlfriend and one of her friends in Auckland last year and was today jailed for a minimum of 19 years.
Justice Judith Potter in the High Court at Auckland referred to a probation officers report which raised serious concerns about the "cultural leap" for Cui from his life in China to the apparent freedom of life in this country.
The probation officer said that with significant amounts of money and few social barriers for a young immature man, that leap may have been too large and he lost control.
Justice Potter also presided in the Jun Jie Ying case where a young Chinese man in Hamilton killed his ex-girlfriend and her new partner.
Cui had just been dumped by his 21-year-old girlfriend Bin Lin, also known as Ruby.
A jury in June found Cui guilty of murdering Ruby by slitting her throat.
He was also found guilty of fatally stabbing Ge Li, 20, and attempting to murder Jun Xin, 22.
The judge said that in both cases young men had resorted to extreme violence in situations which were not unusual for young men and women to face.
She said there might be a difficulty to adjusting to a different culture and environment which needed to be recognised and for which they needed help and support.
While appropriate report mechanisms might exist, there could be cultural or language difficulties in the services not being accessed by those who most needed them.
The judge said that the totally anti-social and criminal behaviour of these young men impacted widely, not only on their victims but also on friends and colleagues at the educational institutions they attended, and with whom they lived.
Justice Potter said she was acutely aware in the course of both these trials of the extreme stress and anxiety on those on the periphery of the offending.
"It is therefore essential that appropriate support services are not only made available but that vigorous efforts are made to ensure, as far as it is possible, that they are accessed in cases of need before it is too late."
The incident happened when Miss Lin, accompanied by the two men, had come to pick up her things from Cui's Unsworth Heights home on April 13 last year.
The jury had been told that Cui repeatedly stabbed Miss Lin and cut her throat in his bedroom.
He then went outside and stabbed the two men, who had been waiting for Miss Lin in a car, before he fled the scene. He was eventually arrested by police in Paihia.
Justice Potter, in sentencing, took into account the fact that there was more than one murder and that the second had been committed to avoid detection.
She said the jury, in their verdicts, had rejected Cui's defences of provocation and self-defence.
She added that, were it not for the fact that Jun Xin received prompt medical treatment, Cui could have faced a third murder count.
The court was told that an offer of amends by Cui's parents had not been accepted by Jun Xin or the families of the other victims. The offer, totalling $18,800, was to pay for expenses incurred.
Justice Potter accepted that the offer was genuine, but said she had been advised that the other parties unanimously opposed receiving it as a way of mitigating the sentence.
She did not order payment of reparation on the grounds that Cui had no means to do so.
Outside the court, defence counsel Barry Hart said there would be an appeal against conviction.
In his submissions during sentencing, he said Cui had wanted to express his remorse at what had happened.
Mr Hart also said Cui's actions had not been planned, but were the result of him reaching a "flash point".
Prosecutor Louise Freyer said the "frenzied" attack on Miss Lin showed a high level of brutality, while the attacks on the men outside were premeditated.
She said both deceased had been only children, and the victim impact reports from their families indicated the extent of their feeling of loss.
- HERALD STAFF and NZPA
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