Man pleads guilty

A man has admitted killing his partner on a rural Waikato property the night before Christmas 2018. Paraki Edwards, 42, pleaded guilty to two charges in the High Court at Hamilton yesterday. One was the murder of Michelle Hurunui, 32, and the other causing grievous bodily harm to a child with reckless disregard, both in Matamata. He is now subject to what’s known as the ‘‘three strikes law’’ and Justice Mary Peters gave him a warning of the consequences of further violent offending. Outside court, a family member of Hurunui said he was glad the case wouldn’t need to go to trial, and family members wouldn’t have to relive the events as witnesses. Hurunui was the only daughter of the family and had four brothers, he said. She was tough, which made news of her death hard to believe. The baby injured in the incident was now doing well, he said. It was reported at the time that Hurunui died that emergency services were called to a house on State Highway 27, at 1pm on Monday, December 24, 2018. A baby was also injured during the incident, flown to Waikato Hospital in a critical condition, but was discharged in early January 2019. Edwards will be sentenced in July 2021.