No jail for husband killer
A woman who fatally stabbed her husband in the chest in Hamilton in March last year to end his violent assault on her had stabbed her first husband decades ago.
Carol Takua Waa, 62, was sentenced to 12 months of home detention when she appeared in the High Court in Hamilton yesterday morning, after earlier pleading guilty to the manslaughter of 55-year-old Gerald Wiremu Waa.
The incident at an upstairs flat in Te Aroha St, Hamilton, on Saturday, March 11, 2017 was the culmination of a 35 year-long marriage marred by frequent bouts of domestic violence – as well as a lifetime of what Justice Gerardus van Bohemen described as ‘‘horrific’’ violence and abuse.
It was not the first time Waa had stabbed a husband with dramatic consequences. In 1983 she was imprisoned for nine months for stabbing her first husband with a vegetable knife.
Her relationship with her second husband was frequently a brutal one, the court heard. She had been kicked in the stomach while pregnant, had suffered a broken cheekbone and she had her achilles tendon slashed – among many other assaults, some of which led to Gerald Waa being sentenced to terms of imprisonment.
He habitually invited home women he met at the pub, and would have sex with them in the house – after first ensuring that he got his wife drunk first.
The court heard she had also suffered at the hands of her father, a veteran of the Vietnam War, and had run away from home when she was 13. She suffered further abuses while she had been placed in state care.
‘‘It made it hard for you to imagine a life without those close to you hurting you,’’ Justice van Bohemen said as he sentenced her. On the night Gerald Waa died the couple had been drinking for much of the day in their onebedroom unit.
They had been socialising amicably with their downstairs neighbours but had retired upstairs around 10pm.
It was around then that Gerald Waa had begun demanding she drive him into town. She refused and in response he threw her across the room into a wooden chair, which broke.
He then stopped her from leaving their bedroom by picking up a bread knife, which he held to her throat.
When he put the knife down, she grabbed it and stabbed him in the chest.
The downstairs residents later told police they heard banging and yelling, which had suddenly stopped. Carol Waa had gone downstairs and had a cigarette with them, before returning to the upstairs flat where she discovered her husband was bleeding badly.
‘‘It made it hard for you to imagine a life without those close to you hurting you.’’
Justice van Bohemen
An artery in his chest had been severed by the single, nine centimetre-deep knife wound.
The ambulance was called, but Gerald Waa could not be saved. When the police were called they found the bloodied bread knife in the kitchen sink. The judge determined that Carol Waa’s status of a long-term victim of frequent domestic violence reduced her culpability, and on the night her husband died she had no actual intention to kill him.
‘‘The deceased was the primary aggressor ... It is not stretching things to say Mr Waa brought about your actions.’’
Carol Waa had been assessed as being chronically depressed, and with limited cognitive function – although whether that was the result of physical assaults or long-term alcohol abuse could not be determined.
The judge disagreed with a pre-sentence report that had found Carol Waa as being of medium risk of reoffending and high risk of harm to others.
Waa, who was represented in court by barrister Kerry Burroughs, was receiving ongoing psychiatric help and was genuinely remorseful for what she had done. She had also conducted herself well while on bail awaiting her sentencing. From a start point of three years and nine months in prison, Justice van Boheman deducted a year to reflect her diminished understanding of her actions and the positive steps she had taken towards rehabilitation and reintegration into society.
There were further deductions for remorse and her guilty plea, which brought the sentence down to two years in prison, which the judge converted to 12 months of home detention.