‘A crazy and evil thing to do’: Ex-wife stabbed in neck at school pick-up as daughter, 4, watches on

Lijun Sun’s ex-wife was waiting for her daughter in the car park of a prestigious Hamilton high school when he walked up, angrily confronted her, then suddenly stabbed her in the throat.

The force of his blow was such that she could feel the tip of the knife inside her mouth.

His assault, on the grounds of St Paul’s Collegiate at 3.15pm on April 8 last year, happened in front of numerous horrified onlookers – including the former couple’s four-year-old daughter, who she had just placed in her car seat moments before.

As the woman attempted to remove Sun’s hand from her throat he thrust the knife in deeper. Eventually she managed to evade his grip and called for help from the other parents nearby. She was able to remove the knife protruding from her neck before falling to the ground.

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Sun stood by and watched as the others tried to help her, before he took a bottle of pills from his pocket and swallowed them all.

He told some bystanders: “It was me. I did it. But don’t worry, I’ll be dead soon. I’ve taken some sleeping pills.”

Then he ran headfirst into a nearby parked car.

Before he was able to do this a second time, he was tackled to the ground by some of the other parents and forcibly taken to a school building, where he was held until the police arrived.

Sun’s attack was the culmination of a campaign of intimidation and harassment that led to him being charged with – and eventually pleading guilty to – wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and three counts of breaching a protection order.

In the Hamilton District Court on Tuesday, the 54-year-old was sentenced to five years and seven months in jail, for what he himself had described in a remorse letter as “a crazy and evil thing to do”.

As the summary of facts on his case revealed in detail, it also marked the final act in the couple’s relationship. They had become involved in early 2015, while they were both living in China.

The couple regularly travelled between their home country and New Zealand, and in July 2016 they married while in New Zealand. That union produced a daughter and the victim also had a daughter from a previous relationship, who was 16 at the time of the incident.

However, the relationship deteriorated and the couple separated in July 2019. On December 29, 2020 a temporary protection order was issued against Sun in the Hamilton Family Court, which became final on March 21 the following year.

It was an order Sun began breaching in the days before the attack – the first on April 3, 2022 when Sun and his mother turned up at the victim’s house uninvited, in an attempt to get her to speak to them. She refused.

It was on April 8, at 12.50pm, when Sun’s mother called the victim to discuss a visitation with their young daughter, which was due to happen the next day.

During that conversation Sun took the phone from his mother and begged his former wife to take him back. He told her he had already packed his things and could move back in straight away and, as the summary notes, “he would pay her back for all the money of hers that he had used”.

She hung up on him. He called her again, and then again – at least 20 calls. She did not pick up.

At 3.10pm she arrived at St Paul’s to pick up her older daughter, and she and her four-year-old took some photos among the trees while they waited.

Then Sun arrived in his car. The woman, fearful of what might happen, returned to her own car in a bid to avoid a confrontation.

Sun, however, approached and asked if she had reported him to the police for the phone calls. She did her best to ignore him and had just loaded the girl into her car seat when he grabbed her neck and then plunged the knife in.

The knife only just missed her carotid artery.

In court, Sun’s counsel Rosalind Brown said while it was no excuse for his offending, a cultural report on Sun had revealed a “causal link” from his background in China and relationship history.

The victim and her daughters had now returned to China, however a Family Court ruling – enforced by a $10,000 bond – had stipulated she must return to New Zealand by May this year for further proceedings.

He had also been assessed as having a harmful alcohol abuse habit. All of these things had “culminated in a very, very bad decision, a huge mistake, what he describes as an evil act.”

Judge Glen Marshall took a start point of nine years in prison, and added three months to account for the protection order breaches.

His guilty pleas warranted a 25% reduction, and his expressions of remorse and the contents of the cultural report a further 15%.

A pre-sentence report found Sun at “medium liklihood” of reoffending.