Good Samaritan attack: Jail 'time for bag-snatcher to think'

Lucy Knight and her husband, Peter Thomas, leave the North Shore District Court yesterday. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Lucy Knight, the good Samaritan who was left fighting for her life after thwarting a bag-snatch attempt, says she hopes her attacker will have time to think about what he did, now that he's been sentenced to prison.

Hendrix Hauwai, 17, was yesterday sentenced in the North Shore District Court to four years and nine months in jail following the September 23 incident outside a Northcote supermarket that left mother-of-six Ms Knight with a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain.

The 43-year-old said she hoped the sentence was long enough "that he can have time to think about what he did and hopefully work on rehabilitating himself".

"It was very interesting to go and hear more details about the case, filling in a few gaps that I have [from] not remembering the incident and learning more about the defendant [and] what he'd been up to."

She sympathised with the situation Hauwai was brought up in, "not particularly that it excuses anything".

Hauwai was also jailed for 12 months in relation to the bag-snatch attempt and two other incidents - an assault in Manurewa on September 17, and another bag-snatch in East Tamaki on September 18, which the media are now able to report.

The two bag-snatch incidents occurred while he was on bail for the Manurewa assault.

Judge Philippa Sinclair said the attacks happened just days after Hauwai's mother left him and his younger sister to fend for themselves "with no food or support".

Hauwai had told police and a psychiatrist that his primary motive in the robberies was "to obtain money to buy food for both you and your younger sister as you were starving", Judge Sinclair said.

Hendrix Hauwai

His life had been one of considerable parental neglect and abandonment.

"In my view, you should not be standing alone today, your mother and father should be standing with you in the dock for your sentencing," Judge Sinclair said.

Ms Knight and her husband, Peter Thomas, were in court for the sentencing.

Judge Sinclair said it was fortunate that Ms Knight did not die from her injuries.

Hauwai's lawyer, Kelly-Ann Stoikott, said the teen did not have the cognitive maturity to understand the consequences of his actions at the time he committed them, but had since suffered "flashbacks of seeing one of his victims falling".

"[This is] a real and physical manifestation of the guilt this young man now carries with him," she said.

Yesterday, police said they could not say if they had had any dealings with Child, Youth and Family in relation to Hauwai and his sister, "not only for privacy reasons but also the fact that the case is still subject to an appeal period".