Christchurch, Sockburn street murder: Police were alerted to mental health patient stabbing nurse with pen six months prior to killing stranger

A psychiatric hospital inpatient who attacked a nurse was still under police investigation six months on when he murdered an innocent mum-of-four during a random street stabbing.

Zakariye Hussein was only charged over stabbing a Hillmorton Hospital nurse in the arm with a pen after he brutally killed Laisa Tunidau Waka while on community leave from the Christchurch institution.

Following a series of questions from the Herald after Hussein was last week jailed for at least 13 years, police have defended the length of time it took to lay charges for the nurse attack.

They confirmed receiving a report of the assault one week after it happened.

Laisa Waka Tunidau with her 12-year-old son Eparama. Photo / Supplied

“Various inquiries were conducted in relation to the matter, and a number of witnesses were spoken with,” a police spokeswoman told the Herald.

“These inquiries were ongoing at the time Hussein committed the offence of murder.”

After Hussein’s “random, gratuitous and unprovoked” murder of Waka on June 25, he had a charge of injuring the Hillmorton nurse with intent to cause grievous bodily harm filed at Christchurch District Court on July 13. His case was called two days later.

During his murder sentencing at the High Court in Christchurch last week, which heard harrowing statements from Waka’s devastated family, he was also convicted and sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment on the nurse assault charge, to be served concurrently with his life sentence.

Hussein was an inpatient at Hillmorton Hospital in Christchurch and had 10 years earlier been jailed for a stabbing rampage, nearly killing a man.

And in 2018, Hussein attacked another Hillmorton nurse when he poured a hot cup of black coffee over their head. For that assault, he was given an extra 10 months in custody as a special patient under the Criminal Procedures (Mentally Impaired Persons) Act.

Grieving husband Nemani Tunidau gives his emotional victim impact statement at the sentencing of Zakariye Hussein. Photo / George Heard

Police say the time it took to investigate the December 2021 assault was not unusual, “given a number of factors”.

“Investigating allegations of assault by inpatients at psychiatric units often take longer due to the necessity to prove the intent of the offender- that they not only committed the act, but also had the necessary criminal intent and were aware that their actions were criminal,” the spokeswoman said.

“When a psychiatric patient is in secure care for committing a previous criminal act, rather than being in prison, that intent is not always easy to prove, so additional inquiries are required with psychiatric experts, and sometimes the Crown, to prove the offender’s intent and that it meets the necessary threshold for charges to be laid.”

The police spokeswoman also said it was important to note that had Hussein been charged for the nurse assault prior to the murder offence, he “would still have been in mental health care while awaiting court proceedings, which generally take longer than six months, and subject to the same restrictions”.

At sentencing, Justice Cameron Mander said psychiatric reports prepared for the proceedings found Hussein held “intense grandiose and religious beliefs”.

He believed God was going to give him money so he could buy houses and marry staff.

The clinical staff he engaged with said he had endless discussions about these beliefs.

On the day of the killing, he was frustrated with hospital staff because they removed staples from a newspaper supplement advertising real estate that he had been examining and circling properties he was going to purchase.

He then left to tell his family he would not be going back to the hospital, telling himself God had given him a “hell of a sad life”.

On his way, he stopped at a library to look at the property section of a newspaper.

He reported to a doctor he then checked his bank account and saw that God had not deposited the “millions and billions” to buy property.

Hussein felt disappointed and believed God was “torturing” him.

He then entered the family home “in a rage”, with thoughts of wanting to hurt someone with no person in mind.

The reports found insufficient evidence to establish he was incapable of knowing the moral wrongness of his actions.

However, there was a “clear nexus” between his significant mental illness and his offending, the court heard.