Family shares pain of son's horror killing
As brothers and best friends Maaka and Nate Hakiwai walked to the bus on their way to the gym, they talked and laughed with no idea it would be for the last time.
Minutes later in Kings Park, in Melbourne's northwest, a car pulled up and two boys jumped out, trying to rob Nate of his "crusty old dirty hat".
Chol Kur and a 17-year-old boy, who can't be named, demanded Nate's '76ers cap.
Nate and Kur scuffled and fell to the ground. Nate looked up and saw 17-year-old Maaka being held in a headlock by the teen.
Then, from out of the car, came Joshua Horton. Armed with a knife he walked up to Maaka, put his hand on his shoulder and stabbed him in the chest.
"There are no words to describe how many lives the three of you have ruined in 16 seconds, including your own," Nate told the three men, through a statement read by his father Stirling Hakiwai in a pre-sentence hearing in Melbourne on Tuesday.
Kur and the teen both pleaded guilty to robbery. Horton was found guilty of manslaughter by a jury who acquitted him of a murder charge.
"Horton you may have stabbed Maaka with the knife in the heart, but on that day you stabbed my entire family in the heart."
The brothers were 14 months apart but Nate, the elder, said their relationship wasn't that of big brother, little brother but equals.
They shared a bedroom, friends, clothes, food and secrets.
"He is the only person who really knew me and I too am the only person who really knew him," he said.
Nate too was stabbed during the attack, suffering life-threatening blood loss through two stab wounds to one leg. He bears not only emotional scars from that day, but physical ones too.
Maaka and Nate had moved from the Gold Coast with their father when the attack happened. It was a move meant to bring the family together after years of Mr Hakiwai's fly in, fly out work.
He said it was a proud moment, having his boys working alongside him.
His wife Karli and their daughters, Leilani and Kiripaeahi, were to move from Queensland at the end of the school year.
Mrs Hakiwai held a framed photo of Maaka, taken on her last day with him. She cooked him an early birthday dinner and afterwards he came to say goodbye and goodnight - he was off to work early in the morning.
"I had no idea that would be the last time that I would hug, hold or see my beautiful baby boy again," she said.
Before Tuesday's hearing seven-year-old Kiripaeahi wrote a note, surrounded by broken heart drawings.
"I'm so sad that you hurt my brother," it said.
The Hakiwai family don't accept the jury's verdict on the murder charge.
"Joshua Horton ... I hope you believe in karma because I do, and I know you will get yours one day," Mrs Hakiwai said.
The hearing is continuing.
