Jilted lover turned street into a bloodbath

After being rejected by the "love of his life" Chinese student Wen Hui Cui turned a quiet North Shore street into virtual abattoir.

He killed his girlfriend Bin Lin in what Crown prosecutor Louise Freyer described as a frenzied knife attack.

Bin Lin, also known as Ruby, suffered multiple stab wounds before having her throat cut from ear to ear.

Cui then casually walked outside, sauntered up to where Ruby's two male friends were waiting for her outside 8 Black Teal Close and stabbed each of them with a large kitchen knife.

One was pierced through the heart and died on the spot. The other suffered severe chest wounds and was lucky to survive.

Yesterday Justice Judith Potter sentenced Cui, 21, to a minimum 19 years' jail.

In June a High Court jury found him guilty of murdering 21-year-old Ruby and her friend Ge Li, 20, on April 13 last year.

He was also convicted of the attempted murder of 22-year-old Jun Xin who survived the attack.

The judge accepted a Crown contention that after killing Ruby, Cui attacked the two men to avoid being arrested for his girlfriend's murder.

The jury heard that when police arrived at the Unsworth Heights address, what confronted them was a bloodbath.

Ruby lay dead on a bed upstairs while Ge Li was lying on the road outside in a pool of blood.

As the drama unfolded, a series of anguished 111 calls were made.

In the final call, which was played to the jury, a severely injured and distraught Jun Xin pleaded for help - his friends Ruby and Ge Li were already dead.

The jury heard that Cui, a business studies student at Massey University in Albany, was besotted with Ruby, who came to Auckland from Shanghai two and a half years before and was studying tourism.

They moved in together, but over the weekend of April 11 to 13 last year, she told him the affair was over and went to Rotorua with friends.

A despairing Cui started drinking and tried to phone her up to 50 times.

When she returned, she phoned to say she was coming around to pick up some of her things.

After drinking a quarter of a bottle of bourbon, Cui took a selection of four knives from the kitchen to the bedroom.

When Ruby went inside the property, Ge Li and Jun Xin waited outside. They had been on their way to a party but agreed to give her a lift to collect her stuff.

Almost immediately they heard Ruby screaming and yelling and tried to phone the police on a cellphone, but had to run to the end of the road to find out what it was called.

They then returned to their car to wait for the police.

Cui, meantime, cut Ruby's throat.

Before leaving the house, Cui had the presence of mind to wash off Ruby's blood, change his clothes and pick up some money and a cellphone.

He also concealed a large knife and walked out the front door to where the men were waiting. Without warning, he stabbed both men before either had time to react.

The jury heard that friends helped Cui flee to Paihia where he was found by police some days later.

At his trial Cui, represented by Barry Hart and Chris Comeskey, claimed that Ruby attacked him with a knife and had told him that the men outside were from the fearsome 14K Triad.

But the jury rejected his defences of self-defence and provocation.

Mr Hart told the judge yesterday that Cui's actions were not premeditated but occurred when he reached "flash point".

Justice Potter said she accepted that a Cui family offer of $18,800 in amends was genuine but the offer had been unanimously rejected by the victims' families and by Jun Xin as a way of mitigating the sentence.

The judge said that the two who died were just children and each was an only child.

Ruby's mother said in a victim impact report that her family was "extremely sorrowful, mind is in a trance, and the feeling of miss grows with each passing day".