NZ woman in US killed with beer bottles and steak knives

A New Zealand woman, Courtney Sau, 19, studying criminal justice in the United States has been stabbed to death with broken beer bottles and steak knives.

Ms Sau will be buried in her hometown of Auckland, though staff at Bridgewater State College, Massachusetts, where she was a first-year student, have said they will hold a memorial service for her.

Two 20-year-old women, Carla Carvalho and her friend, Karen Cordeiro, both from the same address in Fall River, Massachusetts, have been charged with murder and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon in connection with Ms Sau's death, according to the local newspaper the Fall River Herald.

They are accused of using broken beer bottles and steak knives to stab Ms Sau to death outside their home last Friday, after a feud between Cordeiro and Ms Sau over a former boyfriend.

The newspaper said witness statements showed Ms Sau's former boyfriend had gone back to Cordeiro's apartment several weeks ago after a night of partying in Providence, a nearby city, also just south of Boston.

The fight which led to Ms Sau's stabbing death allegedly began to escalate in Providence on the Friday night when the women and their groups of friends ran into each other at two Providence nightclubs.

According to witness statements, Ms Sau was challenged to a fight by Cordeiro outside of the Complex night club on Friday night.

Ms Sau agreed, and drove with a group of friends to Cordeiro and Carvalho's apartment in Fall River to settle the score, but she was apparently overwhelmed by the two women and was stabbed, kicked and left to die on the street.

She was pronounced dead at St Anne's Hospital about an hour after the fight.

- NZPA