Four months after Laisa Waka Tunidau was murdered by a mental health patient as she walked home from work, her 12-year-old son continues to wake at night calling out for his mum.
The 52-year-old was only two doors from her home on Cheyenne St, Sockburn when a man armed with a steak knife walked towards her and stabbed her several times before she fell to the ground and he ran off. She died at the scene as Eparama, aged 11 at the time, watched paramedics try to save her.
The killer, Zakariye Hussein, was an inpatient at Hillmorton Hospital in Christchurch and had 10 years earlier been jailed for a stabbing rampage, nearly killing a man.
Waka Tunidau’s husband, Nemani Tunidau, spoke to the Herald for his first in-depth interview about losing his “beloved wife” who he had been with for 26 years.
The couple, who married in 1998, had four children and had been living together in New Zealand since 2018 in search of a better life.
That dream came crashing down on June 25 this year. Earlier that day Tunidau dropped his wife off at work before he drove to Waimate to help members of the Fijian community. The last thing he told her was that he would see her after work.
About 2.30pm Hussein was granted community leave from Hillmorton Hospital. He then took a bus to Sockburn and started walking to his family home.
On the way, he became angry about some issues arising at the hospital. While walking, he saw a man mowing his lawns and decided to stab him. At his family’s house, he took a steak knife from the kitchen drawer and put it in his pocket.
But as he went outside, he thought it was too close to home and did not want his own family to witness anything.
As he walked down Cheyenne St, he saw a woman walking. He took out the knife and stabbed her repeatedly around her chest as she tried to protect herself.
Tunidau remembers what happened next vividly - “it’s too hard to forget it”, he says.
He was driving home when he received a call asking where he was. Tunidau was told something had happened and that his wife was in the hospital.
He did not know how serious it was until he arrived at the parish pastor’s home and was greeted by police who told him she was dead.
He then had to tell his children about their mother’s death. The main question coming from them was “why mum?”
“This is the hardest part when I tried to say to them it has happened, we can’t just bring mum back to life, she’s gone,” he said.
“I told them this is what happened. She passed away in a way that nobody wants to happen to their mum like that, to be killed by someone.”
He then told them the best thing they could do was work hard, go to school, get a good job, and make their mum proud remembering what she taught them growing up.
Waka Tunidau’s body was taken home to Fiji and her funeral was held on July 5 in her village of Nabitu in Tailevu.
Tunidau recalls sitting on the plane struggling to cope with what had happened and how much life had changed since they moved to New Zealand.
“You come to live together in New Zealand, we sacrifice a lot to come here, then you’re taking her back and I’m on the same plane – one is a passenger on the plane and the other one is just like a cargo and I just felt sorry for her.”
While in Fiji, Eparama told his dad he did not want to walk into the family home again as everything would come back to him.
After arriving back in New Zealand, Tunidau went to the house to pack everything up and look for a new house.
“We just started a new life again, just a new family again. Just back from the start, everything that we had, everything that we planned for our future just came to an end and it’s really hard to start again.”
It was not until September 9, as he sat in the High Court at Christchurch, that Tunidau got to see Hussein in person as he pleaded guilty to murder. He then heard the details of what happened to his wife.
As he listened, he says he wanted 5 minutes alone with Hussein to “just do whatever I want to do to him”.
Then came the news articles detailing Hussein’s previous offending. Tunidau could not understand why he was released on community leave, nor why he was in a mental health facility as opposed to prison.
“They should not have let him out. A guy like that, I don’t know why they’d just let him out.”
He blames health authorities for what happened to his wife and wants compensation for his family.
There are two reviews following the murder - one into Hussein’s care, the other into the secure unit at Hillmorton.
Tunidau, who refers to Waka Tunidau as his “beloved wife”, says she was a “very kind woman” whom everybody loved. She was also a loving mother who often held the home together looking after the children while Tunidau was working back in Fiji building houses, schools, and hospitals around the island as she looked after the children.
Eparama used to get in bed with his mum when he would wake in the middle of the night.
“Now he wakes up in the middle of the night, he calls out ‘mummy, mummy’ and I have to wake him up and be there for him,” he said.
“When things happen I stay just to ease him and comfort him because that’s actually the most important part of the night.”
Tunidau continues to find it hard to cope but says it’s helped to have two of their other children home from Fiji with him, as well as Waka Tunidau’s cousin and his wife.
“It’ll never bring her back again, but life has to move on and we just have to take it step by step with everything that we can do.”
Tunidau also wanted to thank all the people who had helped the family following his wife’s death.
After work, Waka Tunidau would pick up Eparama from school and they would bus home together. The routine stopped after her death, but another family had taken up the school run.
“[The community] has been really helpful … people just coming in, bringing in food, clothing, and everything. Just to be with the family, they know it’s a rough time we’ve been through,” Tunidau said.
“She was always there for [the children] and I just feel sorry for our kids for what has happened. When I see them I can see they really miss their mum and it’s hurt me a lot.
“I have to be a mother and a father all the time. It will take time, it won’t heal easy.”
