Kiwi teen admits murder after meeting victim on Tinder

A police roadblock at Matahorua Rd on the day the body was found. Photo / Duncan Brown

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A young Hastings woman today became the second teenager to plead guilty to the murder of a man who was dumped and left to die in a remote roadside ditch north of Napier, reports Hawke's Bay Today.

Rosie Page Lewis - who was 17 when she took part in the killing of young Indian immigrant Sandeep Dhiman eight days before last Christmas - admitted the charge when she appeared in the High Court at Napier.

She also pleaded guilty to a charge of causing grievous bodily harm with intent to rob Dhiman of a car and cellphone.

Lewis had met Dhiman via the dating app Tinder last year and they went on to meet in person.

She has now been remanded in custody by Justice Rebecca Ellis for sentencing in Napier on July 22. The judge, sitting in Wellington, also lifted an order previously suppressing publication of Lewis' name and identity.

A police roadblock at Matahorua Rd on the day the body was found. Photo / Duncan Brown

Last month accomplice Shaun Liam Karauria, still aged 17, was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole term of 12 years after he also pleaded guilty.

The killing was discovered when a truck driver noticed the brutalised body of 30-year-old IT professional and student Dhiman in a ditch beside Matahorua Rd, inland from Titira on State Highway 2, on the morning of December 18.

Summaries say that during the days before the killing the pair planned to rob Dhiman, Lewis using a cellphone he had given her and which she then used in a text-message murder plot with Karauria as Dhiman drove them to where he would eventually be attacked.

Having been lured by Lewis to Flaxmere to meet her, Karauria and a third person, Dhiman was ultimately coerced into driving the killers to Tutira where Karauria would stab him nine times in the back, heart, throat and chest.

As they drove away, Karauria noticed Dhiman was still moving so he returned and continued the attack.