Fakavai happened to pull in behind the victim in his work vehicle.
The pair got out, with Fakavai holding a cricket bat with a broken handle in his hands and said, “come on boy, let’s do this”, as he waved the bat around.
The victim - who was unarmed - approached him and said, “yep, let’s do this”.
The victim’s partner, who was watching on, became “immediately frightened” for the pair, ran across the road and got in between them, and began pushing Fakavai in the chest, saying “no, you’re not going to do this today, we’ve been to the police, they’re dealing with this”.
Fakavai grabbed her wrist and threw her away from him before yelling, “f*** you boy, you don’t intimidate my missus”.
He swung the bat at the victim’s head but the victim managed to block it.
However, Fakavai was able to swing the bat again, hitting him “forcefully” in the side of the head, sending him to the ground and leaving him unconscious for about 10 to 15 seconds.
The victim’s partner ran over screaming and punched Fakavai in the head, but it didn’t affect him.
Fakavai yelled at the victim, before he came to and said, “my face, my face”.
The victim’s partner called 111.
Fakavai stood over him and said, “That’s what you f****** get. Don’t ever f****** intimidate my missus again” and left.
The victim was taken to Waikato Hospital, where he was in the high-dependency unit for two days with injuries including bleeding from the right ear, a fractured skull on both sides - that could impact his hearing - and bleeding on the brain.
When questioned by police, Fakavai said, “They provoked me.
“I pulled over and I had had enough. You can only take so much of it.”
Defence counsel Vhari Thursby told Judge Brett Crowley in the Hamilton District Court this week that Fakavai had expressed “genuine remorse” for what happened and was currently being assessed to go through the Man Alive programme.
She urged Judge Brett Crowley not to send Fakavai to prison, and instead hand down a home detention sentence so he could complete the course.
Fakavai had also had “poor emotional regulation” from a young age and that was evident in the attack.
His family, including his father and partner, were in court to support him and he had no previous convictions.
But Crown Solicitor Lexie Glaser asked the judge to temper any remorse and section 27 discount with Fakavai’s comments to a pre-sentence report writer which amounted to victim-blaming, stating the victim had been “baiting him and he’d had enough”.
Judge Crowley said he was “very troubled” by the case, in fact, it was one of the most troubling he’d dealt with on Tuesday.
“There are a few matters I have found profoundly troubling, and yours is certainly one of those.
“You have said a few times now, ‘I’m not a violent man’. You are.
“At least on one day in your life, you were an extremely violent man ... you could have killed him.”
The judge said he could hardly blame the victim for not wanting anything to do with Fakavai.
“He was in a coma and he’s likely to have permanent damage to his eyesight and will likely need glasses now for the rest of his life. He didn’t before.”
He had read letters of support about him but still couldn’t work out how it happened.
“I just can’t see what led you to do this that is not going to lead you to do this again.
“We all get very, very angry but not many of us are prepared to do this to another human being, especially somebody in our extended whānau.”
On a charge of wounding with intent to injure, the judge agreed to keep Fakavai out of prison, sentencing him to 11 months’ home detention and ordered that he pay emotional harm reparation of $2000.
“You need to make sure when you are angry again you don’t act in this way,” the judge told him.
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for nine years and been a journalist for 20.
