Inpatient who killed while on leave set to be sentenced

A man who murdered a stranger while on community leave from a mental health hospital is to be sentenced today in the High Court at Christchurch.

Zakariye Hussein, 37, pleaded guilty in September to killing Laisa Waka Tunidau as she walked home from work on June 25.

Hussein was an inpatient at Hillmorton Hospital in Christchurch and had 10 years earlier been jailed for a stabbing rampage, nearly killing a man.

According to the summary of facts Hussein was granted community leave from the hospital about 2.30pm on June 25. He then took a bus to Sockburn and started walking to his family home.

On the way, he became angry about some issues arising at the hospital. While walking, he saw a man mowing his lawns and decided to stab him. At his family’s house, he took a steak knife from the kitchen drawer and put it in his pocket.

But as he went outside, he thought it was too close to home and did not want his own family to witness anything.

As he walked down Cheyenne St, he saw a woman walking. He took out the knife and stabbed her repeatedly around her chest as she tried to protect herself.

In his first in-depth interview following his wife’s death, Nemani Tunidau recently told the Herald he blames health authorities for what happened to his wife and wants compensation for his family.

He recalled having to tell his children about their mother’s death. The main question coming from them was “why Mum?”

Wverything that we had, everything that we planned for our future just came to an end and it’s hard to start again.

Nemani Tunidau, widower

“This is the hardest part when I tried to say to them it has happened, we can’t just bring Mum back to life, she’s gone,” he said.

“I told them this is what happened. She passed away in a way that nobody wants to happen to their Mum like that, to be killed by someone.”

He then told them the best thing they could do was work hard, go to school, get a good job, and make their Mum proud remembering what she taught them growing up.

Waka Tunidau’s body was taken home to Fiji and her funeral was held on July 5 in her village of Nabitu in Tailevu. After arriving back in New Zealand, Tunidau went to the house to pack and look for a new house.

“We just started a new life again, just a new family again. Just back from the start, everything that we had, everything that we planned for our future just came to an end and it’s really hard to start again.”

It was not until September 9, as he sat in the High Court at Christchurch, that Tunidau got to see Hussein in person as he pleaded guilty to murder. He then heard the details of what happened to his wife.

As he listened, he says he wanted five minutes alone with Hussein to “just do whatever I want to do to him”.

Then came the news articles detailing Hussein’s previous offending. Tunidau could not understand why he was released on community leave, nor why he was in a mental health facility as opposed to prison. “They should not have let him out. A guy like that, I don’t know why they’d just let him out.”

As well as kidnapping a pie delivery driver at knifepoint — and then almost fatally stabbing a city council worker — in the March 2012 rampage across Christchurch, in 2018 he attacked a Hillmorton Hospital nurse and poured a hot cup of black coffee over their head.

There are two reviews following the murder — one into Hussein’s care, the other into the secure unit at Hillmorton.