Police forensics inspect a Hamilton house where a violent attack on New Year's Day this year resulted in the death of a baby, and injuries to its mother and sibling. Photo / Dean Purcell
Warning: This story contains information that may upset some readers.
A woman who was being repeatedly stabbed in the neck pretended to be unconscious in the hope her attacker would stop and leave, giving her time to flee to a neighbour’s home for help.
Her tactic worked and she made it to the front lawn of the neighbouring property before the 34-year-old man grabbed her.
He stabbed her two more times before running back into a Hamilton house.
Inside, the man went on to stab a baby to death and stab a toddler several times in the abdomen and chest after smothering them with a blanket.
Today, the man appeared in the High Court at Hamilton in front of the woman and her supporters for sentencing on one charge of murder and two of attempted murder. He also had his own supporters in court.
Justice Grant Powell told the man the killing, and attempted murders on January 1 this year “required a high degree of callousness ... and a hardened state of mind or numbness of the soul”.
He warned those in the courtroom of the graphic nature of the summary of facts document, which can’t be reported in full because of suppression orders.
“The impact of your actions cannot be overstated,” the judge told him today, before telling the victims his “heart goes out to you all”.
Reading her victim impact statement to the court, the woman said: “I stand here broken and scarred forever by what happened that night.”
She lived with complex PTSD and in a constant state of fear.
“I am easily overwhelmed and most days it feels like I am hardly breathing,” she said.
“Sometimes my body burns and it feels like I am fading away into death.
“I think about my baby and whether she cried or if she suffered for long or if she was afraid.”
The woman said she fought for her life multiple times that night and explained how her “world was shattered” upon hearing her baby had died.
She now harboured an unimaginable guilt and felt as though she had failed her daughter.
“She had the most curious eyes ... long black curly hair framing her doll-like face.”
She would have turned 1 in four days.
“We will cry for the years stolen from her ... she deserved to live.
“She will never be forgotten.”
The night the incident unfolded, the children had been put to bed.
Shortly before midnight, the woman was in the laundry listening to music on her headphones when the man burst in, catching her by surprise, and attempted to slit her throat several times, cutting her neck in the process.
An attempt to slice across her throat caused her to fall to the ground.
As she lay prone, he covered her face with a blanket, making it difficult for her to breathe, while continuing to stab her several more times in the neck.
He told her it was her New Year’s resolution and that he was sorry, “but she had to go”.
She begged him to stop and told him that she didn’t want to die.
He did not stop. Instead, he told her that once he had killed her, he was going to kill the children.
It was only after the victim pretended to lose consciousness that he stopped attacking her and moved away.
She then took the opportunity to escape to a neighbour’s property but the man chased her down and tried to drag her back towards the house.
On the neighbour’s lawn, he stabbed her twice more in the abdomen before running back to the house where the children were alone and sleeping.
The woman, before losing consciousness, asked the neighbour to get the children because she believed the man was going to harm them.
The man found the children asleep in a room. He covered one victim’s face with a pillow and the other with a blanket before stabbing them both repeatedly in the abdomen and chest.
The slightly older victim survived her injuries but had undergone multiple surgeries since.
The younger victim suffered two stab wounds, including one that pierced her heart, causing a “catastrophic” cardiac injury.
The man was found shortly afterwards in the backyard of a neighbouring property with multiple cuts to his neck.
The court heard the woman and her child would have died if not for substantial medical intervention.
Defence counsel Richard Barnsdale read a statement from the man in which he expressed his “deepest regret” to the victims.
“I hope one day they can heal from this and find forgiveness.
“Not a day goes by that I do not think of them and what I have done. I will pray for them always.”
He urged the judge to keep his end sentence to around 18 years and unsuccessfully pushed for discounts for his client’s background and mental health factors.
The judge cited a psychiatrist’s finding that the man had “emotional dysfunction”, PTSD, depression and traits of various personality disorders but nothing that would warrant a discount on his sentence.
He said the man had been admitted into a mental health ward for a time before being discharged in early 2024.
The judge said the man was driven by “emotional dysregulation and alcohol” on the night and harboured anger towards the woman.
Justice Powell said there was no argument that the attacks met the threshold to issue a prison term for 17 years or longer, given the premeditation and the victims’ defencelessness and vulnerability.
The judge noted the cruelty of his comments to the victim, telling her he was going to first kill her, then her children.
“Ultimately, the harm you caused the victim was amongst the most serious it could possibly be for an attempted murder.”
He also noted the “intentional and deliberate nature” of the baby’s murder in setting a 19-year start point, before adding a six-year uplift for the two attempted murders.
Further setting the case apart was the man’s admission he had intended to kill all three victims.
After applying a discount for his pleas, Justice Powell couldn’t determine any other mitigating features and jailed the man for 23 years.
Speaking after sentencing, Detective Senior Sergeant Ian Foster said the scene was “one of the most horrific” he had dealt with during his time with police.
“I know for our front-line responders, what they were faced with [finding the injured woman], and then being directed into the house and finding the children with those significant, horrific injuries, and at the time still not knowing where the offender was, was heroic on their part.”
Foster said the officers helped save the life of the older child that night.
As for the investigation team, Foster said it had been “one of the most emotionally difficult cases” they’d dealt with but had “shown an extremely resilient attitude to dealing with it”.
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 10 years and has been a journalist for 21.