A Judge has told a man alcohol and drugs were no excuse for his offending.
A Judge has told a man alcohol and drugs were no excuse for his offending.
A jail sentence of four years and nine months may be the reminder a man needs after separate attacks in which he threatened to kill a neighbour with Down Syndrome and nine days later took to his child's mother with a knife and stomped on her.
Agatapu Samu, 33, hadbeen drinking and using synthetic drugs before the prolonged abuse of his partner in Napier suburb Marewa, but he'd seen "red" and couldn't remember what had happened.
When he appeared in Napier District Court on Friday, Judge Geoff Rea reminded him the impact of alcohol and drugs was certainly no mitigation for the offences, which led to Samu pleaded guilty to two charges of injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, two of threatening to kill or cause grievous bodily harm, and one each of injuring with reckless disregard for the woman's safety, assault with a weapon, and assault.
The court was told that on August 20 last year Samu was living in a block of flats, and after leaning out of a window to swear at neighbour who had Down Syndrome, went downstairs, swore at the man again, slapped him in the face, and told him he would get a gun, shoot him, and wouldn't care about the consequences.
Just over a week later Samu was drinking and using synthetic drugs when he yelled at his partner as she slept in a lounge and demanded she come to him, as he stood waiting clutching a kitchen knife before saying:
"Give me one reason why I shouldn't put this knife in you."
Drawing the knife in a slicing motion Samu inflicted superficial cuts to her jaw and neck, and as another man tried to stop him, Samu said: "If you don't back off I'll stab you too."
Samu then punched the woman repeatedly and stomped on her, and her next memory was of him strangling her in a bedroom.
During the incidents he threw the knife at her, cutting her hand.
Over the next two days he would barely let her out of his sight, a summary said, but the woman took her chance when he wanted her to go to Work and Income about stopped payments, the police were called and she was taken to hospital, with swollen eyes, multiple injuries to her neck and head and other bruising.
