NZ man slain in row at Solomon Islands work site

By PATRICK GOWER

A New Zealand builder was stabbed to death with a wartime bayonet in the strife-torn Solomon Islands yesterday.

Kevin Leslie O'Brien, a former Aucklander, was killed when he arrived to supervise work on a Fletcher Construction project in the capital, Honiara, at 7.30 am.

His killer is a Solomon Islander who worked on the project as a painter. Police believe he may be hiding in rugged bushland.

The pair had a minor argument at the site on Friday.

Project manager John Mulholland, a former Southlander and close friend of the dead man, said Mr O'Brien was stabbed in the stomach when the killer rushed at him while he was bending over talking to a colleague.

The weapon was about 70cm long and the end had been sharpened like a stiletto.

Mr O'Brien, aged 39, died as he was being taken to hospital.

"Kevin was really well respected by the local community. He had married a local, they had a child - he is the last guy who should have been hurt," Mr Mulholland said.

The Pacific nation was torn apart by two years of civil war between rival islanders that left more than 200 dead and was ended by a coup in 2000.

Mr O'Brien was building the new finance ministry, a two-storey development next to the office of the Prime Minister.

He was one of three expatriates working for the contractor, Fletcher Kwaimani Joint Venture, and had been living in the Solomons for more than five years.

Although his murder was not related to the ethnic conflict, those spoken to yesterday blamed it on the collapse of law and order since the civil war began.

"If there was some order I very much doubt that [the killer] would have gone to such extreme measures," said one, who did not want to be named.

"The whole mindset has changed here. When you get rid of that thin blue line and the criminals know they will get away with anything, then things get brutal."

The New Zealand High Commissioner in Honiara, Heather Riddell, confirmed there were concerns that the police's capability to respond to crime had broken down.



"It is not a well-ordered society here and people need to take care because things like this can happen.

"But things have not yet descended into anarchy and we hope they won't."

Assistant Commissioner Johnson Siaeu said witness accounts indicated the murder weapon was a Second World War bayonet.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is warning New Zealanders to maintain a high level of "personal security awareness" and not to travel within the islands without consulting the High Commission.