Police probing Lower Hutt homicide reveals victim died from fatal stab wounds

Craig McKelvie died in hospital on October 14. Photo / Supplied

Police have revealed new information in relation to the death of a Lower Hutt man in hopes the public can help identify his attacker.

Craig McKelvie was found with serious injuries at a property on Mason Ave on the night of October 14 and later died in the hospital.

Tonight on TVNZ’s show Ten 7, Detective Senior Sergeant Martin Todd described the weapon that was used to inflict McKelvie’s injuries as a “single-bladed, sharp-edged instrument” such as a knife.

Todd said the weapon had likely been discarded, and there’ll be people that may come across it, and asked locals of the Moera area to check in their front yards to see if it had been discarded there.

Todd also described McKelvie’s final movements, placing him in a blue Mitsubishi Outlander just before 10pm at McDonald’s Petone the night he was murdered.

The car is then seen travelling on Randwick Rd, closely followed by the black 2004 Honda Odyssey included in an earlier appeal this week.

During the programme, Todd said the Odyssey had since been located.

The Odyssey then pulled in behind the Outlander on Mason Ave, both McKelvie and a person inside the Odyssey got out of their respective cars, which is where the altercation took place and McKelvie was fatally injured

McKelvie then ran to a nearby friend’s place for help but died an hour later in hospital.

Police are continuing to appeal to the public for information regarding where the two vehicles may have gone next after leaving Mason Ave.

“We first want to identify who was in the blue Mitsubishi Outlander on the day of the attack,” Todd said.

“The second element is why did Craig go to Mason St to start with?”

In April of this year, McKelvie was sentenced to three months of home detention for assaulting an elderly man who had taken out a $10,000 hit on his head.

During the trial, Judge Davidson described McKelvie as a “career criminal”, with a criminal history that spans from the mid-1980s right up to 2021, including a conviction for attempted murder.