Neighbour speaks of ‘nightmare’ tenants in lead up to toddler’s death

Wednesday, 25 October 2023

A police car parked in front of a property is the only sign of a potential crime scene being investigated down a quiet suburban street in Lower Hutt.

A man in personal protective equipment walked back and forth between a police tent down the driveway and the front door.

Flashes of cameras could be seen in the window where writing on the glass included the message “f… off” above bottles of alcohol lined up along the window sill.

On the front lawn, mattresses and a kid’s toy lie in an abandoned pile.

The police presence had been ongoing since Sunday, when the child, Ruthless-Empire was taken to Hutt Hospital in an unresponsive state about 12.30pm and died a short time later.

Ngatanahira Reremoana, Ruthless-Empire’s uncle, said the whānau were devastated by the news of his death, and the child had been due to celebrate his second birthday on Wednesday.

Reremoana said he didn’t want to disclose information about his nephew’s death due to the ongoing police investigation.

“Ruthless-Empire had a happy and bubbly personality. He would always brighten up any room with his bright smile.

“We received the news of his death whilst our church bells were ringing on Sunday, that our Baby Ru had grown his wings.”

The family were still waiting for Ruthless-Empire’s body to be released back to them following an autopsy at Wellington Hospital.

An investigation team was working to establish the circumstances leading to the infant’s death, a police spokesperson said.

The police originally said on Tuesday a homicide investigation had been started but later corrected this to say the death was being treated as unexplained.

A neighbour of the property on Poole St, Taitā, who grew up there, said the neighbourhood was usually quiet and the community reasonably tight-knit.

But it had been a “nightmare” since new tenants moved into the Kāinga Ora property in January.

“Everyone on the streets looks after each other but everyone collectively hated them,” he said.

The neighbour, who asked not to be named, said he heard yelling and screaming from the property earlier on Sunday morning before his neighbours appeared to jump into a car, “screeching away” down the road.

Just days earlier, he noticed the rubbish put out on their front lawn.

The commotion, however, was not unusual after about 10 months of living next door to the tenants, he said.

A woman and her partner had moved in, but recently, the woman’s cousin and her nephew had been staying at the house.

Initially, he approached the couple to be friendly but their relationship took a quick turn after he tried to intervene when he witnessed the woman beating her dogs in the garden one evening.

The next day, his fence had been smashed. Not long after, he regularly started to get rubbish, scraps of food and dog poo thrown onto and at his property, as well as a plant pot which damaged the weatherboard of his house. “Just a lot of crazy stuff,” he said.

He said the woman was often violent with their four dogs, constantly chained up at the property. Almost every other day, he could hear screaming and yelling, he said.

At one stage, the woman tried to beat the neighbour himself with a trampoline leg, while on another occasion, she threatened to steal his car and burn his house down.

“It is scary,” he said, sometimes afraid to leave the house just to go grocery shopping in case something happened.

He also had to put up additional fencing in his garden to stop his dog from being able to get too close to the property. The woman had been throwing chocolate and other foods that can be toxic to dogs over the fence.

He had called the police about 15 times and Kāinga Ora about 30 times but nothing had been done.

The property had renovations done before the couple moved in but was wrecked within weeks, he said.

The carpet had been ripped up, window framing broken, and the house lined with rubbish strewn everywhere.

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The man said the cousin mostly kept to herself and he had seen the toddler cycling up and down the driveway last week.

A Kāinga Ora spokesperson said the team was “very sad” to learn about the death at one of its properties.

“We will be working alongside other agencies to understand the needs of the whānau to ensure they get the support they need at this extremely difficult time.”

The spokesperson declined to comment further while police investigated the circumstances of the death.