Teen stabs man in heart, says witness
A Hamilton woman thought her partner had been punched in the chest by a girl who had broken into their car.
But as Vicki Reihana knelt down to check on why her partner, Norman Kingi, was lying on his back on the road outside their Ranui St home, he began gurgling blood.
Two girls, now 14 and 16, yesterday went on trial in the High Court at Hamilton defending a charge of murdering Kingi on July 28, last year.
Kingi was stabbed by one of three girls caught by the couple breaking into a car parked outside their home.
“We ran up the hill to the car and I grabbed the girl in the front.”
Reihana choked back tears as she recalled the final moments of her partner’s life as the 12-year-old continued swearing, shouting and trying to wrestle free. She saw the two accused returning, yelling at the couple to let their friend go.
“It was ‘Let her go’, ‘Let her f ****** go or we will do you’,” she said.
She said Kingi yelled at the girls that they couldn’t “come down here and steal our stuff”. The older accused then walked up to Kingi and threw what she thought was a punch.
But “the punch” was a knife being driven into her partner’s heart.
The 12-year-old began screaming, Reihana said she turned to look at her before looking back.
“I turned around again and Norman was on the ground. The girls had taken off up the hill.”
She then let the young girl go as she checked on Kingi who by then was gurgling blood.
In opening the Crown case, prosecutor Philip Morgan, QC, submitted the girls had been out breaking into cars.
Morgan submitted the accused meant to cause serious bodily injury so their friend could escape the custody of Reihana. Ron Mansfield, counsel for the older accused, said his client admitted stabbing Kingi but she did not do it with any murderous intent. Rather, she was doing it to protect herself against an angry and intoxicated Kingi who was confronting her about the break-in.
In his short opening, Roger Laybourn, counsel for the younger accused, said his client only met the co-accused the night the stabbing took place.
It was an incident that was “all over in a matter of seconds”.