She said Tuhou watched true crime shows and had once told her that “strangulation was the perfect murder”.
Her ordeal included other assaults, during which she scratched Tuhou’s face to try to get free, yelled from a window for help and then ran outside the house, only to be dragged back in.
Eventually, she managed to break free and call 111.
Tuhou, 36, later pleaded guilty to two charges of strangulation, one charge of threatening to kill and one of assaulting a person in a family relationship.
He was jailed for two years and three months by Judge Brian Callaghan in the Christchurch District Court in June 2023.
Tuhou appealed against his sentence to the High Court at Christchurch, arguing that it was “manifestly excessive”.
Justice Rachel Dunningham dismissed the appeal.
Her decision said that, during an argument, when Tuhou was heavily intoxicated, he grabbed his partner round the neck with two hands and lifted her off the ground.
When she stood up, he grabbed her again and pushed her back on the bed.
This happened about four times.
When she got off the bed and went across the hallway to the bathroom, Tuhou followed her, kicked the door open and lifted her off the floor with both hands around her neck.
When she went into the lounge, he threw her onto the couch and squeezed her throat again, while telling her he was going to kill her.
She could not breathe and scratched his face to get him to let her go.
She ran to an open window and yelled for help. When Tuhou closed the window, she ran outside.
He followed and grabbed her by the back of the neck with two hands as she was again calling out for help.
She held onto the wing mirror of a car to prevent herself from being pulled back into the house, but the mirror broke off.
As Tuhou was carrying her into the house, he tripped and pulled her down on top of him, again trying to grab her around the throat.
She managed to get away and call emergency services.
In the appeal against his jail sentence, Tuhou’s lawyers argued that similar cases had begun with a lower starting point for sentencing.
They also argued that the assaults were an “uncharacteristic demonstration of violence” and he had not offended in that way before.
However, Justice Dunningham said the victim had experienced “terror” during the attack.
“It is important to recognise that, in the present case, there were two very serious strangulation events, both of which caused the victim to become incontinent,” she said.
“Furthermore, there were elements of strangulation in the associated assaults.
“The summary of facts refers to two further incidents of grabbing her around the neck, the first of which involved lifting her off the ground.
“Also aggravating this offending was the threat to kill made during one of the serious incidents of strangulation.”
She dismissed the appeal.
Involuntary urination is a common response to being choked. It is one of the things victims are asked about when health workers seek information from them after they have been attacked.
A new offence of strangulation, or impeding breathing, was introduced in 2018 after a Law Commission report found that 71 per cent of homicide victims in a domestic violence setting had been strangled earlier in the relationship. It carries a maximum of seven years in prison.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.
