High Court<\/a>, and several investigative reports, he was declared unfit to stand trial in December.<\/p>\nJustice Michele Wilkinson-Smith said Adams had been living with well-established schizophrenia since 1991 which was treatment-resistant.<\/p>\n
Doctors reported Adams had limited understanding of what was occurring in forensic interviews and could not recall prior court proceedings.<\/p>\n
He had a history of violent offending, much related to his chronic mental illness and also experienced chronic hallucinations, cognitive impairment and psychosis.<\/p>\n
Adams told doctors the only thing he could recall from the offending was that the victim had been \u201cembarrassing by his behaviour\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr Adams\u2019 response to mental health treatments over the long term has been at least partial and he continues to have both positive and negative effects of psychosis,\u201d Justice Wilkinson-Smith said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has limited capacity to engage in any analysis of his behaviour at the time of the index offence and poor insight into his needs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Justice Wilkinson-Smith said Adams met the threshold for special patient status as his ongoing requirements were high.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder special patient status, Mr Adams could not be discharged without the highest level of health, namely the Minister of Health.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a need to consider the protection of the public from further offending. Mr Adams himself must receive treatment to ensure he is safe from future offending.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adams was ordered to be detained in a mental health facility indefinitely.<\/p>\n
![\"Rita]()
Rita Tawhai and her partner Geoffrey Ware, who died in May 2025.<\/p>\n
Similar circumstances<\/p>\n
Korewha, 27, had been living with schizophrenia for four years before he fatally stabbed his mother\u2019s partner, Geoffrey Ware.<\/p>\n
He had been in and out of mental health wards and prescribed a range of treatment for his mental health.<\/p>\n
At the time of Ware\u2019s death in early May, 2025, Korewha had just begun a new medication for his schizophrenia. His mother, Rita Tawhai, was concerned he should have been in a facility while this was occurring and said her partner\u2019s death could have been avoided.<\/p>\n
He was declared unfit to stand trial at the High Court in Whang\u0101rei in December and ordered to be detained in a secure mental health facility on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
It is still unclear to professionals whether his illness will stabilise and he is deemed a risk to society and himself.<\/p>\n
Tawhai told the court yesterday she believes her partner\u2019s death could have been avoided if her son had been placed in a secure facility during his medication change.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo lose the love of my life is heartbreaking. To lose my son to a system that doesn\u2019t work is devastating.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had talked with the mental health team and was disappointed they didn\u2019t help sooner,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPoor decisions have caused the love of my life to be lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shannon Pitman is a Whang\u0101rei-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the Te Tai Tokerau region. She is of Ng\u0101puhi\/ Ng\u0101ti P\u016bkenga descent and has worked in digital media for the past five years. She joined NZME in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richard Adams had an established history of treatment-resistant schizophrenia he had been living with for 30 years. Both…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2948,1763,5195,1968,14236,29406,4275,111,43,139,69,17699,6289,15160,152213,544,1961,96,13118,1455,1869,1533],"class_list":["post-267683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-adams","tag-article","tag-be","tag-discusses","tag-held","tag-indefinitely","tag-murder","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-offender","tag-readers","tag-richard","tag-schizophrenic","tag-some","tag-this","tag-upsetting","tag-violence","tag-warning","tag-whangrei","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267683","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=267683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}