Jerome Folimatama (18) blew a kiss and a did a victory sign to his smiling supporters in the upstairs public gallery in the High Court at Dunedin as he was led down to the cells after his sentencing yesterday.
In July, Folimatama stabbed Samantha Jo King (23), who is also the mother of his baby son, multiple times at her South Rd home and when the blade of the knife broke off in her chest he got an axe and hit her over the head with the blade.
After the attack he took his son and left, leaving Miss King's 5-year-old alone to go next door and tell a neighbour of the attack on his mother.
Doctors have told Miss King it was a miracle she survived the attack, which has left her with limited vision, missing teeth, significant scarring and requiring further surgeries, including a titanium plate in her head where pieces of skull are missing.
Miss King and her supporters were audibly upset during the sentencing, but when the final sentence of six years, four months was announced there were gasps from her family, who later said they considered it far too light.
"We are disgusted. It's absolutely ridiculous. It basically excuses that sort of violence," Miss King's mother, Brenda Whiteman, said outside the court.
"We thought he'd at least get 10 years, because he basically killed her. He killed her; she just survived it."
The families, who were kept separate in court, exchanged words and gestures before they were led out of the court via different exits. About 15 minutes later, Folimatama's supporters shocked some onlookers by performing a haka - believed to be Te Ka Tonu - when a prison van they thought he might be in left the yard.
Dunedin kapa haka tutor Komene Cassidy said if it was Te Ka Tonu, it was not appropriate for the situation.
"These were likely to be young people who were either looking for a way to express their anger at the system or show support for their mate, and who probably did not fully understand what the haka was about."
Miss King began the session by reading out her victim impact statement, in which she said one of her greatest concerns was how the attack had affected her 5-year-old son.
"How does a 5-year-old child process watching a man he loves plunging a knife into his mother?"
She said she had been dating Folimatama for about a year before the attack and felt happy and secure with him.
"From the time I met him ... I fell in love with him. He was perfect in every way."
He treated her well and was good with her son.
When she found out she was pregnant she was scared, but he stayed by her side.
However, as the relationship developed he started telling her who she could and could not be friends with, particularly when it came to males, and arguments would develop if male friends texted her or wanted to become her friend on Facebook.
When she tried to break up with him, he smashed a window at her home.
She had called police and had him trespassed, but they were having a child together, and it seemed right that they should try to work things out, she said.
Two months before the attack his behaviour became worse, their arguments more heated and he was increasingly anti-social.
When she woke up in Dunedin Hospital and her family explained to her why she was in intensive care, she felt as though her "heart had been ripped out of [her] chest", she told the court.
" ... it seemed like an impossible situation ... he had never hit me before and now he had dangerously injured me".
As well as her physical injuries, she could no longer live independently and relied on others to drive her around, but it was the emotional damage that was hardest to live with.
She was distraught there had been a tug of war over her children while she was in a coma and she lost custody of her eldest son while in hospital, and now had an interim parenting order.
"It sometimes feels like people have forgotten I did not do this to myself."
The thing that devastated her as much as anything else was that Folimatama simply left her 5-year-old to take care of himself and see his mother lying unconscious and bleeding.
To Folimatama, she said what he did was brutal and evil and he needed to take responsibility for it.
She would never forgive him and had no sympathy for him.
"Jerome... you had no right to brutally try and end my life in front of my children, you had no right to lay a hand on me... no-one deserves to go through what you have made me go through."
