hired to evict the couple by his landlady<\/a>, Rebecca Allcock, who told him they owed rent money and were dealing drugs.<\/p>\nHe expected to earn \u201cbig money\u201d for the job, telling Allcock he might need to \u201crough them up a bit\u201d to get them out, to which she responded: \u201cI\u2019m fine with that.\u201d <\/p>\n
Faatoia drove to the couple\u2019s townhouse on a motorbike armed with two blades, a wire garrote and rope, smashed his way into their bedroom and threatened them with a Bear Grylls \u201csurvival knife\u201d.<\/p>\n
But his plan to intimidate the couple backfired with tragic consequences when the boyfriend grabbed his own orange-handled hunting knife and plunged it into Faatoia\u2019s neck.<\/p>\n
As Faatoia suffered heavy blood loss from the wound, the couple dragged him outside on to a patio where they stomped and kicked him about his body as he lay face-down on the ground.<\/p>\n
Part of the patio violence was captured on CCTV. <\/p>\n
The graphic footage showed the boyfriend smeared with the victim\u2019s blood and clutching a knife. It was played to the jury, as was the 111 call, and the phone video recording of Faatoia threatening the couple moments before he was stabbed. <\/p>\n
The man stabbed Faatoia twice more in the head and buttocks before the attack finally ended. <\/p>\n
\u2018We made sure we got him\u2019<\/p>\n
The man was charged with murder and the woman with being a party to murder. <\/p>\n
The Crown argued the force they used during the attack on Faatoia was excessive, \u201cgratuitous\u201d and disproportionate, describing the incident as a \u201cfurious and frenzied\u201d assault.<\/p>\n
However, the couple\u2019s lawyers argued they feared for their lives and were only acting in self-defence. <\/p>\n
They claimed the violence meted out on the patio was irrelevant to the case because, unlike the initial neck wound, the injuries inflicted were \u201cinsignificant\u201d and did not contribute to Faatoia\u2019s death. <\/p>\n
During a police interview after the killing, the woman admitted saying, \u201cget him, get him before he gets us\u201d, as her boyfriend attacked the former actor who stood 1.88m tall and weighed 115kg.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we made sure we got him and then I said stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you supposed to do when a big-arse man like that … is charging at you with a knife? What would you do?\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Tomuri]()
Tomuri Place in Mt Wellington was cordoned off after the fatal stabbing at the townhouse on August 31 last year. Photo \/ Hayden Woodward<\/p>\n
Giving his closing address yesterday, the woman\u2019s lawyer Philip Hamlin told the jury his client was innocent. <\/p>\n
Though she had also kicked and stomped the victim as he lay prone on the patio, she did so with bare feet and was not a murderer.<\/p>\n
Hamlin described the terror of Faatoia, a complete stranger who told people he was ex-military, forcing his way into their room in full army fatigues then grabbing the knife from his tactical belt. <\/p>\n
Faatoia had backed the man into a tiny ensuite bathroom before attacking the woman on her bed, Hamlin said. At that point the man used his own knife to protect his girlfriend.<\/p>\n
Though fatally injured and bleeding heavily from his severed jugular, Faatoia continued to fight and the two men fell struggling to the bedroom floor, where Faatoia punched and bit the boyfriend, Hamlin said. The woman then tried to grab Faatoia\u2019s knife from his hand, cutting her finger in the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe says she\u2019s terrified. She thinks she\u2019s going to be killed.\u201d <\/p>\n
Faatoia wouldn\u2019t die for several minutes and was still talking, mumbling about calling the \u201ctroops\u201d. <\/p>\n
Fearing he was still a danger to them, the couple pushed the intruder out the sliding ranch door, where they beat him until he was no longer a threat.<\/p>\n
\u2018That\u2019s going to live with us forever\u2019<\/p>\n
The woman told police it was \u201ceither us or him\u201d and the couple went into \u201csurvival mode\u201d. <\/p>\n
If her boyfriend hadn\u2019t grabbed a knife, \u201cyou would have been picking me up in a body bag\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n
She believed Allcock had sent Faatoia to hurt them, referring to the landlady as a \u201cf***ing pyscho\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact one body even had to be picked up is sad,\u201d the woman said in her interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s someone\u2019s family member lying on the ground. He doesn\u2019t get to go home. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s heartbreaking. That\u2019s going to live with us forever.\u201d <\/p>\n
After learning she was being taken into custody, she told officers that despite Faatoia storming her house and coming at her with a knife, \u201cnow I\u2019m getting arrested\u201d.<\/p>\n
While the Crown argued the boyfriend \u201cfinished off\u201d Faatoia out of anger while the victim was defenceless, Hamlin told the jury the couple had no intention of killing him.<\/p>\n
![\"An]()
An aerial shot of the homicide scene on Tomuri Place in Auckland’s Mt Wellington. Photo \/ Hayden Woodward<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a complete stranger. They had no motivation to hurt this man at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese two acted to defend themselves and nothing more than that. The force they used was proportionate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamlin dismissed Crown arguments about the graphic nature of the CCTV footage and suggestions the patio attack was causative to Faatoia\u2019s death by accelerating blood loss, saying expert medical evidence proved that was wrong. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t make any difference.\u201d <\/p>\n
He also stressed that his client had nothing to do with the fatal injury inflicted in the bedroom and was not culpable for Faatoia\u2019s killing. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe was going to die in minutes. What she did on the patio had no effect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lane Nichols is Auckland desk editor for the New Zealand Herald with more than 20 years\u2019 experience in the industry.<\/p>\n
Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justice James MacGillivray granted the request and defendants learned their fate about 3.50pm. The judge thanked the jury…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,9539,8414,1968,545,1866,37151,3368,42,8916,10053,12517,61094,10048,4275,43,5006,1118,5764,56452,427,165,1961,40,38,41,39,13118,1455,52,102],"class_list":["post-154158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-content","tag-couple","tag-discusses","tag-extreme","tag-find","tag-graphic","tag-guilty","tag-headlines","tag-homicide","tag-house","tag-jury","tag-knife","tag-mt","tag-murder","tag-news","tag-not","tag-of","tag-soldier","tag-stormed","tag-story","tag-their","tag-this","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-violence","tag-warning","tag-wellington","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}