Finauga Faatoia and wife Sarah. Photo supplied: Sarah Faatoia. Via NZME reporter Rachel Maher
Graphic content warning: This story discusses extreme violence
A woman charged with being a party to murder after her boyfriend fatally stabbed a knife-wielding intruder who burst into their bedroom dressed as a soldier told police “he was trying to hurt me so we had to hurt him”.
During a police interview after Finauga Faatoia’s death on August 31 last year in Mt Wellington, she admitted saying, “Get him, get him before he gets us”, as her boyfriend attacked the former actor who had just invaded their home.
“So we made sure we got him and then I said stop.
“What are you supposed to do when a big-arse man like that ... is charging at you with a knife? What would you do?”
She said her boyfriend made sure the intruder “didn’t get up”.
The couple, who have name suppression, are on trial for murder in the High Court at Auckland.
The jury heard Faatoia had been hired as “muscle” by his landlady, Rebecca Allcock, to evict the couple due to a dispute over unpaid rent.
He travelled to their Tomuri Place townhouse on a motorcycle armed with two knives, a wire garrote and rope, warning Allcock he might need to “rough them up a bit” to make them leave.
But after Faatoia smashed his way into the couple’s bedroom and threatened them with a large Bear Grylls “survival knife”, the boyfriend grabbed his own orange-handled hunting knife and plunged it into Faatoia’s neck.
“Gagging and gurgling” as he bled out over several minutes, Faatoia was then dragged outside, where the couple beat him about the head and body in what the Crown described as a “furious and frenzied” attack.
The boyfriend stabbed Faatoia again in the head and buttocks as he lay face down on the ground before the attack finally ended.
Graphic CCTV footage showed the shirtless boyfriend smeared with blood and clutching a knife as Faatoia lay dying just out of shot.
But the defence claims the violence meted out on the patio was irrelevant to the case because, unlike the initial neck wound, the injuries inflicted were “insignificant” and did not contribute to Faatoia’s death.
Giving his closing address yesterday, the woman’s lawyer Philip Hamlin told the jury his client was innocent, and the pair had acted in self-defence.
Though she had also kicked and stomped the victim as he lay prone on the patio, she did so with bare feet and was not a murderer.
Hamlin described the terror of Faatoia, a complete stranger who told people he was ex-military, forcing his way into their room in full army fatigues then grabbing the knife from his tactical belt.
Faatoia had backed the man into a tiny ensuite bathroom before attacking the woman on her bed, Hamlin said. At that point the man grabbed his own knife and used it to protect his girlfriend.
Though fatally injured and bleeding heavily from his severed jugular, Faatoia continued to fight and the two men fell struggling to the bedroom floor, where Faatoia punched and bit the boyfriend, Hamlin said. The woman then tried to grab Faatoia’s knife from his hand, cutting her finger in the process.
“She says she’s terrified. She thinks she’s going to be killed.”
Faatoia wouldn’t die for several minutes and was still talking, mumbling about calling the “troops”.
Fearing he was still a danger to them, the couple pushed the intruder out the sliding door, where the man kicked, stomped and stabbed Faatoia, also “dropping the knee”.
The woman told police Faatoia “was not stopping, he tried to get back up”.
“He was still screaming.”
She told police it was “either us or him” and the couple went into “survival mode”.
If her boyfriend hadn’t grabbed a knife, “you would have been picking me up in a body bag”, she said.
She told police she believed Allcock had sent Faatoia to hurt them, referring to the landlady as a “f***ing pyscho”.
“The fact one body even had to be picked up is sad,” the woman said in her interview.
“That’s someone’s family member lying on the ground. He doesn’t get to go home.
“It’s heartbreaking. That’s going to live with us forever. Just trying to defend ourselves. F***.”
After learning she was being taken into custody, she told officers that despite Faatoia storming her house and coming at her with a knife, “now I’m getting arrested”.
She also urged police to view the CCTV.
While the Crown argued the boyfriend “finished off” Faatoia out of anger while the victim was defenceless, Hamlin told the jury the couple had no intention of killing the 40-year-old that day.
“This is a complete stranger. They had no motivation to hurt this man at all.
“These two acted to defend themselves and nothing more than that. The force they used was proportionate.”
Hamlin dismissed Crown arguments about the graphic nature of the CCTV footage and suggestions the patio attack was causative to Faatoia’s death by accelerating blood loss, saying expert medical evidence proved that was wrong.
“It didn’t make any difference.”
He also stressed that his client had nothing to do with the fatal injury inflicted in the bedroom and was not culpable for Faatoia’s killing.
“He was going to die in minutes. What she did on the patio had no effect.”
Summing up the case before sending the jury out to begin deliberating yesterday afternoon, Justice James MacGillivray said the CCTV footage was “horrible to watch”. But he cautioned the jury not to let emotional responses cloud their decision-making.
He reiterated that the defendants were innocent until proven guilty, and the Crown had to prove the charges beyond reasonable doubt.
While neither defendant elected to give evidence during the four-week trial, the jury should not draw any negative inference, he said.
While the law allowed for someone to defend themselves if they were under attack, self-defence was “not a blank cheque”, the judge said.
The force used must be proportionate and reasonable in the circumstances. This would be an important matter for the jury to consider in this case.
Lane Nichols is Auckland desk editor for the New Zealand Herald with more than 20 years’ experience in the industry.
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