A black SUV could be seen under a tarp as police investigated the incident that happened in Wattle Downs on Sunday night.
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An Auckland woman who has suffered family violence for most of her life – including a head-stomping decades ago that required extensive facial reconstruction - has been given a rare non-life sentence for the murder of her most recent abusive partner.
Returning to the High Court at Auckland this week, Chantelle Aniwa Stone was instead ordered to serve 12 years in jail after Justice Matthew Muir agreed with submissions from the defence and the Crown that a life sentence would be “manifestly unjust”.
Stone, who spent multiple days in the witness box during a trial this year, failed to convince jurors that she was not guilty due to self-defence when she stabbed partner Peter Rerekura in the neck during a drunken domestic dispute in an SUV in October 2022. Rerekura – whom she had been dating for more than two years, soon after he was released from prison on violence charges – had been driving wildly through Wattle Downs, South Auckland, where the couple shared a home.
There were elements of “excessive self-defence” – albeit still illegal and still considered murder – Justice Muir said as he considered the sentence. The judge said he also believed that Stone didn’t intend to kill her partner, instead committing “reckless murder”, which occurs when a person knows their actions run the risk of causing death and decides to take the risk anyway.
“Suffice to say, [the relationship] was characterised by multiple instances of domestic abuse against you,” the judge said. “...You have become a serial victim of domestic violence.”
But she was also antagonistic and prone to engaging in minor violence as a result of her alcohol issues, the judge added, noting that the stabbing was unlikely to have happened had she been sober.
“Ms Stone is undoubtedly two people - one sober and one intoxicated,” he said. “As a sober person, she presents in many ways pro-social. ...Intoxicated, she is an entirely different person.”
Stone and Rerekura were on their second box of Flame beer on the night he died. Rerekura became aggressive, which was followed by the defendant accusing him of disrespecting her whānau and slightly pushing him on the shoulder, according to a summary of the evidence recounted by the judge. Rerekura then pulled his partner to the passenger side of the vehicle and ordered her to get in before driving to the end of their driveway.
At that point, Stone testified, her partner began repeatedly beating her head against the dashboard of the vehicle. Justice Muir said he didn’t accept that evidence, noting that a neighbour saw nothing of the sort.
Peter Rerekura was stabbed to death by his partner Chantelle Stone in Wattle Downs in 2022. Photo / Hayden Woodward
After roughly five minutes, Rerekura sped away from the home at an estimated 70km/h, with tyre marks showing he drove partway on the kerb for 30-40 metres before returning to the road in a long slide. The judge agreed the marks might have been caused by Stone trying to grab the steering wheel.
Rerekura had a history of using a vehicle to assault police and the defendant, and there were fears he might be trying to get into a fatal crash as part of a murder-suicide, the defendant has suggested. The judge disagreed but acknowledged that Rerekura was likely to have begun pushing, punching or grabbing the defendant as they struggled for control of the vehicle.
“You retrieved a pair of scissors from the glove box and stabbed Mr Rerekura in the right side of the neck,” Justice Muir noted, explaining that the wound severed the carotid artery and appeared to be so deep it went to the handle of the scissors.
“You were heard screaming for help and observed holding Mr Rerekura’s neck, leaning over him and appeared to be helping him,” the judge said, noting that at another moment she was seen temporarily removing pressure from the wound so that she could take another sip of beer.
“It’s all my fault,” she was overheard crying.
Oranga Tamariki records suggest Stone grew up in a family where “abuse had been rampant over four to five generations”, the judge said.
By age 19, Stone was serving a five-month sentence for throwing her 20-month-old son on the floor and kicking him in the stomach while she was intoxicated. The incident was so disturbing that jurors were not told about it during the trial and the Herald was ordered to temporarily remove a 24-year-old story from the internet just in case a juror ignored a directive by the judge not to do research. However, the assault was briefly referred to at sentencing.
At 20 years old, after losing another child to suspected cot death, she was attacked by her then-partner so brutally she required six metal plates to reconstruct her face.
“Since that time, any application of force to your head has resulted in more than usual pain,” the judge said, noting that Rerekura would have been aware of that vulnerability.
She entered another violent long-term relationship in 2009 before meeting Rerekura in 2020.
Their relationship was marred by multiple occasions of alleged violence. Six months before his death, Rerekura had allegedly punched her and pushed her head into the passenger-side window while driving erratically before braking suddenly to make her hit the dashboard after she unbuckled her seatbelt.
Peter Rerekura was fatally stabbed in the neck with scissors by partner Chantelle Stone. Photo / Hayden Woodward
Two months before his death, Rerekura allegedly smashed a glass ranch slider door, dragged Stone by the hair to glass shards and began stomping on her head. Although there were no witnesses to many of the attacks, Justice Muir said he accepted their truthfulness.
It is standard in New Zealand for murder convictions to result in automatic life sentences with a minimum term of imprisonment of at least 10 years before an inmate can apply for parole. That means that even after a person is released from prison, they would be subject to potentially strict parole conditions for the rest of their life. But the law allows an exception for cases in which a judge deems it would be manifestly unjust.
With both sides in agreement, finding such a sentence unjust was not a difficult decision, the judge said. He struggled more with a follow-up question: should Stone be subject to a minimum period of imprisonment, and if so, for how long?
Defence lawyer Jo Murdoch argued against one, noting that over the two years she’s been in prison awaiting trial, her client has become more aware of the “extreme trauma” in her life and how she “gravitated towards these types of relationships”.
Crown prosecutor Chris Howard asked that a 50% minimum term be imposed, arguing that there was still a strong need for deterrence and denunciation in light of the already-reduced sentence.
The judge agreed, to a degree.
“Despite the empathy you deserve for the trauma you have endured in your life, you also have to accept ... the role you played in your offending,” Muir told her.
But in the end, he decided the Parole Board was best placed to decide when she should be released. He expressed hope they wouldn’t release her until she could show she’d taken advantage of rehabilitation programmes provided in prison designed to address not just her alcohol issues but her “underlying trauma that is probably at least partially responsible for the way you have abused alcohol in the past”.
“You have no future without complete abstinence from alcohol,” the judge warned. “If you remember one thing from this sentencing, please let it be that.”
Despite his chequered past, Rerekura was also remembered this week as a family member “who gave so much love and aroha”.
“We ... want you to know that you have broken a big part of our whānau,” his sister said during a victim impact statement that preceded the sentencing. “What you’ve done can never be repaired.”
Rerekura’s daughter said she had been estranged from him for years after her own complicated relationship with him, but she made an effort to re-establish contact after her daughter was born a decade ago.
“She loved her koro,” she said. “She was robbed of her relationship with her koro. ... [Stone’s] actions have had such a big impact on so many people’s lives.”
The Herald applied to photograph Stone during the sentencing. The judge denied the request, noting the defendant’s psychological challenges and the “unacceptably high psychological burden” a photo might create.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
