She sat in the back of the courtroom, hoping the killer would catch her eye.
Marteine Robin once feared those eyes. Wild and glazed, they had latched onto her a decade before.
In 2012, Zakariye Mohamed Hussein, “possessed by the devil”, had kidnapped Robin at knifepoint, slashed her, and made her drive across the city.
But now, the fear had gone. The judge had just said Hussein would be jailed for life.
This time, the Somalian civil war refugee was in court for an even worse crime.
Hussein, 37, had pleaded guilty in September to killing Laisa Waka Tunidau as she walked home from work on June 25.
Robin knew he wouldn’t see the light of day again.
“I gave him a ‘toodaloo motherf*****,” she told the Herald outside court.
“I really wished he looked over. I was going to give him the fingers and wave.”
Robin went along to the High Court on Friday, inside Courtroom 3 at Christchurch’s Justice Precinct, hoping for some closure.
She hadn’t seen Hussein since he was jailed for six-and-a-half years for the 2012 attack on her which only ended when a police officer shot him twice at close range with a Glock pistol.
On Friday, with Hussein seated just a few metres away in the dock, head bowed, hands clasped, and wearing an orange prison-issue tracksuit, it was a nerve-wracking experience.
“The butterflies and all of the memories came flooding back,” Robin said.
“I just wanted to make sure he was put away for good.”
This time, the court heard how Hussein had “intense grandiose and religious beliefs”, feeling ripped off and enraged that God had not deposited “millions and billions” into his bank account to buy up property.
So, he left Hillmorton Hospital, where he was an in-patient with a history of attacking staff, including pouring a hot cup of black coffee over the head of a nurse in 2018, and just last December, stabbing another nurse with a pen.
This year on June 25 at 2.30pm, he was wanting to hurt someone. Anyone.
He pounced on innocent mum-of-four Laisa Tunidau Waka during a brutal, “random, gratuitous and unprovoked” street knife attack, stabbing her eight times and leaving her for dead.
Ten years earlier, he’d said he had been “possessed by the devil”.
For Robin, it felt eerily similar.
“Except this time, he said God made him do it, not the devil,” she said.
Tunidau Waka’s killing has devastated her family, with her 12-year-old son speaking in court on Friday about losing his “loving, caring mum” who he misses every day.
He will “never forget” the day he looked outside and saw ambulances and his mother lying on the ground.
Now, he struggles to sleep, suffers nightmares, and wakes up scared.
His older brother, 23-year-old Epineri Tunidau said his mother was “the most unselfish, kind, caring, considerate and compassionate person you could meet”.
Tunidau Waka’s 19-year-old daughter Sereana Tunidau told Hussein that he would “forever be known as a murderer”.
Hearing those statements in the courtroom made Robin well up.
“Those kids were so brave,” she said outside court, looking for a pub to have a soothing drink.
“When I went to my sentencing, I couldn’t get up and do that. My temper would’ve got in the way and I would’ve been escorted out of the courtroom. I couldn’t do that.”
She also has no time for Hussein’s back story about growing up during a bloody civil war and once being taken hostage at gunpoint.
“There are a lot of people out there who have had just as bad an upbringing, sometimes even worse, and don’t go around stabbing everybody they meet, just because they have a bad day or don’t get what they want,” Robin said.
“It’s not really an excuse in my book.”
Justice Cameron Mander sentenced Hussein to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 13 years.
The news brought a spontaneous outbreak of applause from Tunidau Waka’s family and others in the public gallery.
Robin was also happy with that outcome.
“He will never, ever pass the tests that they are going to throw at him,” she said.
“So, knowing that he’s never getting out in a stupid amount of time is a massive weight off my shoulders.
“I don’t have to worry that he’s going to pop up behind me some time walking down the street or try to jump into my truck again.
“I don’t have that fear anymore. He’s going to be locked up.
“He’s just a horrible, horrible human being.”
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