Police responded to the stabbing near Auckland Girls' Grammar School in December 2024. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
Police responded to the stabbing near Auckland Girls' Grammar School in December 2024. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
A small-statured sex worker who chased down and stabbed a larger-framed client after he twice welshed on payments has been sentenced to home detention, with a judge citing her vulnerability.
Auckland resident Laken Dane Kingi, 30, caused the lockdown of Auckland Girls Grammar School and a nearby early childhoodcentre last December due to the bloody scene, which occurred right as the school was letting out for the day.
Court documents state Kingi and the client had minutes earlier been involved in a “tussle” inside the defendant’s parked Nissan Wingroad on Howe St in Freemans Bay.
“The defendant, holding a hunting knife, chased the complainant,” the agreed summary of facts states.
“While running away, the complainant fell face down in the middle of the road.
Police responded to the stabbing near Auckland Girls' Grammar School in December last year. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
“The defendant approached the complainant and stood over him. She raised her hand, holding her knife above her head with the blade pointing forward toward the complainant.”
She then “thrust the knife in a forceful downward arc”, causing a large and deep gash to his upper shoulder, before a bystander jumped in and pushed her away.
The victim was taken by ambulance to Auckland Hospital. But the full extent of the injury, and its lasting effects, are not known.
Crown prosecutor Sophie-Anne Barry told Auckland District Court judge Belinda Sellars that police had tried making contact with the victim multiple times since Kingi’s guilty plea but he no longer seemed interested in engaging in the court process.
The prosecutor sought a prison sentence, describing it as an aggravating feature that the stabbing occurred near a school.
It would have been “a grossly violent and overly exaggerated response” to having not been paid for her services, Barry said.
Defence lawyer Luka Grbavac agreed that a higher starting point, probably resulting in a custodial sentence, might have been appropriate had his client pleaded guilty to wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
That crime, which she was initially charged with, carries a maximum punishment of 14 years’ imprisonment. But Kingi instead pleaded guilty to injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, punishable by up to 10 years, Grbavec noted.
Judge Belinda Sellars, pictured, sentenced the woman to home detention. Photo / Supplied
While self-defence was ruled out after she ran after the man, “there’s certainly an element of the defendant being in a vulnerable position” while in the small confines of the car with the much larger client, he said.
Since her arrest, there appeared to have been an improvement in the defendant’s mental health as she engaged in services, he said.
In assessing what sentence to assign Kingi, Judge Sellars noted that she had to take into account the violence and the use of a weapon as aggravating factors. But they were tempered somewhat by the context of the situation, she indicated.
“It is not prolonged,” the judge said of the stabbing. “It is one strike.”
It should also be noted, the judge said, that the knife was kept in the defendant’s car because of the dangers of her profession.
“I accept you were inherently a vulnerable person who was in a vulnerable position,” Judge Sellars said. “That said, you took the law into your own hands in a way you shouldn’t have.”
She set a three-and-a-half-year starting point before applying 45% in reductions for the woman’s guilty plea, mental health and personal issues, including her pregnancy. Kingi is due to give birth in December.
“It appears to me you have not had an easy ride,” the judge said, announcing an end sentence of 10 months’ home detention.
The defendant wiped away tears as she left the dock.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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