Te Runa, who has already served the equivalent of a 23 month sentence while remanded in custody, will be released soon.
A protection order was granted in favour of the woman, his partner for three years, with whom he has one child.
The case was to be heard at a trial earlier this year but it was abandoned just after a jury was empanelled due to an administration error in Auckland. (Letters sent by the Auckland branch of the Ministry of Justice, failed to inform some jurors they would be required for up to two weeks.)
Since then, Te Runa pleaded guilty to the charges against him — five counts of threatening to kill or do grievous bodily harm, two counts of assault with a sharp weapon, possession of an offensive weapon, and assault on a female.
The offending began on August 23 last year, when Te Runa’s partner refused to continue filling out WINZ forms as she realised it would entitle him to sole custody of their child and a bigger benefit payment.
Enraged by her refusal, Te Runa threatened to smash a coffee cup through her jaw, saying she would have no face.
He held it to her temple until the woman, so frightened, agreed to complete the forms.
Still angry, Te Runa told her he would erase her off the earth and bury her in the back yard.
From then until September 6, he controlled her life, not letting her leave the house unless accompanied by him.
On August 30, she went to the Work and Income office to change her address after getting a phone call about the forms, which Te Runa filed.
On September 6, Te Runa became enraged again. He told the woman she had until 3am to get out of the house or be murdered.
She stayed on the back step in wind and rain until about 7am when he said, “get inside bitch and tend to this baby”.
She was lucky, he said, as he was going to smash her face into the concrete.
While the woman tended to their baby, he grabbed her hair from behind jerking her head back, covered her mouth with one hand and held a pocket knife to her throat with the other.
He said, “I’m going to cut you from ear to ear.
“Hold your baby ‘cos it’s the last day you’re going to survive.”
Fearful of being killed and struggling for breath, the woman pleaded with Te Runa for about a minute until he let her go.
The woman later told police his expression was strange. He was still holding the knife and breathing deeply as if he was getting worked up.
She tried to calm him down and get the knife from him but Te Runa abused her and pushed her away.
She returned to the baby but Te Runa went too, this time brandishing a hammer. He said, “turn around (and) don’t look at me while I smash this through your brain”.
The woman tried to get the hammer off Te Runa and in doing so, felt the knife he used earlier in his pocket. She grabbed it. He told her to get out but she said she needed to attend to their baby first.
Te Runa said he would murder her that day and bury her in the backyard or cook her in a pot, destroy the meat, and take her bones.
He strode around the house, still holding the hammer and calling her abusive names.
She managed to grab the hammer and threw it out the back door but then Te Runa armed himself with a breadknife, its blade about 20cms.
The woman fled to a neighbour’s house.
When questioned by police, Te Runa denied any altercations and accused the woman of being a crack whore who controlled him. He denied trying to get her to change the WINZ forms.
Judge Cathcart commented on the scale of the offending and called it “particularly grave”.
He noted the woman’s comments that notwithstanding the seriousness of Te Runa’s conduct, she still missed things with him and thought their baby missed him too.
The judge set a global starting point of 32 months with no uplift for Te Runa’s previous relevant conviction, as it was more than 20 years ago.
There was two months discount for a degree of remorse shown by Te Runa and 15 percent discount for his guilty pleas.
