Teen killer’s name to stay secret

A 15-year-old girl who plunged a knife into the heart of a man who caught her breaking into his car will keep her name secret.

The girl, now 16, was sentenced to two years and 11 months’ imprisonment in the High Court in Hamilton yesterday after being found guilty by a jury of the manslaughter of Norman Kingi, 54, who died following the incident in Hamilton, about 11.30pm on Friday, July 28, last year. The girl was granted permanent name suppression by Justice Timothy Brewer on the basis that her rehabilitation back into society once her jail sentence was completed would be crippled if her name was ‘‘out there on social media’’.

The girl and a 13-year-old stood trial in the same court in October, each facing charges of murdering Kingi.

The older girl was found guilty of manslaughter while the younger one – who has permanent name suppression – was found not guilty of murder or manslaughter.

The Crown alleged the pair were the elder two of three girls – at the time aged 15, 13 and 12 – who were caught breaking into a car owned by Kingi and his partner, Vicki-lee Reihana, which was parked outside their house. The couple caught the youngest girl, while the other two ran off – only to return armed with a knife and a screwdriver.

There was a confrontation and the oldest girl stabbed Kingi with the knife, fatally injuring him.

The Crown case was that both girls made a conscious decision and had a common intention to rescue their younger companion, and the stabbing was a deliberate act.

At sentencing, Justice Brewer opted for a start point of six years.

He allowed for a 35 per cent discount to reflect her young age, and a further 15 per cent in acknowledgement thatshe offered to plead guilty to manslaughter about six weeks before the trial.

The judge also deducted a further five months to reflect the time the girl had spent on electronic bail awaiting trial.

‘‘Sometimes the death of a person is very close to an accident.

‘‘In other times a manslaughter can be within a whisker of murder,’’ the judge told the teenager. ‘‘Your case is not at either of those extremes.’’

In seeking permanent name suppression for his client, Ron Mansfield argued the value of fully rehabilitating her as a productive member of society outweighed the value of people knowing who she was.

She was also deemed at low risk of reoffending.