Finauga Faatoia, 40, died a violent death on May 31 last year after being stabbed in the neck when he burst into a Mt Wellington townhouse to threaten a young couple over a tenancy dispute.
Graphic content warning: This story discusses extreme violence
A jury deliberating whether a young couple committed murder in a bizarre case involving a festering tenancy dispute and a hired armed “muscle” man dressed as a soldier have found the defendants not guilty.
There were gasps from the public gallery as the verdicts were delivered this afternoon, with one man storming out of court and one of the defendants weeping quietly in the dock.
The couple, who have name suppression, have been on trial in the High Court at Auckland for the last four weeks in connection with Finauga Faatoia’s violent August 31, 2024 death at a suburban Mt Wellington property.
The jury were unable to reach unanimous verdicts but sought permission to return a majority decision at 3.15pm today after almost seven hours’ deliberation.
Justice James MacGillivray granted the request and defendants learned their fate about 3.50pm.
The judge thanked the jury for their service and discharged the defendants who were free to go after completing some paperwork.
This morning the jury asked to see a recorded phone video of Faatoia bursting into the couple’s Tomuri Place bedroom armed with a large knife, and for a graphic 111 call to be played in which the woman could be heard screaming before the sound of “gagging and gurgling” as Faatoia bled out after being stabbed in the jugular.
The court heard the 40-year-old had been hired to evict the couple by his landlady, Rebecca Allcock, who told him they owed rent money and were dealing drugs.
He expected to earn “big money” for the job, telling Allcock he might need to “rough them up a bit” to get them out, to which she responded: “I’m fine with that.”
Faatoia drove to the couple’s townhouse on a motorbike armed with two blades, a wire garrote and rope, smashed his way into their bedroom and threatened them with a Bear Grylls “survival knife”.
But his plan to intimidate the couple backfired with tragic consequences when the boyfriend grabbed his own orange-handled hunting knife and plunged it into Faatoia’s neck.
As Faatoia suffered heavy blood loss from the wound, the couple dragged him outside on to a patio where they stomped and kicked him about his body as he lay face-down on the ground.
Part of the patio violence was captured on CCTV.
The graphic footage showed the boyfriend smeared with the victim’s blood and clutching a knife. It was played to the jury, as was the 111 call, and the phone video recording of Faatoia threatening the couple moments before he was stabbed.
The man stabbed Faatoia twice more in the head and buttocks before the attack finally ended.
The man was charged with murder and the woman with being a party to murder.
The Crown argued the force they used during the attack on Faatoia was excessive, “gratuitous” and disproportionate, describing the incident as a “furious and frenzied” assault.
However, the couple’s lawyers argued they feared for their lives and were only acting in self-defence.
They claimed 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.
During a police interview after the killing, the woman admitted saying, “get him, get him before he gets us”, as her boyfriend attacked the former actor who stood 1.88m tall and weighed 115kg.
“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?”
Giving his closing address yesterday, the woman’s lawyer Philip Hamlin told the jury his client was innocent.
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 used his own knife 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 ranch door, where they beat him until he was no longer a threat.
The woman 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 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.”
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”.
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 him.
“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.”
Lane Nichols is Auckland desk editor for the New Zealand Herald with more than 20 years’ experience in the industry.
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