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Samoan man charged with murder in Australia

 Arona Peniamina, 38, has pleaded not guilty to murdering his wife
Source: The Daily Mail

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA — A Samoan man is denying murdering his wife by allegedly stabbing her with such force the tip of the kitchen knife he used broke off in her head.

Arona Peniamina, 38, is on trial in the Brisbane Supreme Court after pleading not guilty to murdering his wife Sandra at their home in Kippa-Ring, north of Brisbane (Australia), on March 31, 2016.

He had admitted killing her, pleading guilty to a lesser offense of manslaughter, a plea rejected by prosecutors.

“She died on the driveway of that house covered in her own blood, you will hear, most likely killed with a bollard that was taken from the fence line,” prosecutor Dzenita Balic told the jury on Monday.

Ms Balic alleges Peniamina punched the mother-of-four and stabbed her multiple times with a kitchen knife, kicking her when she fell to the ground.

“She wasn't actually going to die from those injuries,” Ms Balic said.

When Mrs. Peniamina tried to escape, her husband followed her, threw her to the ground in the driveway, kicked her again and beat the back of her head with a bollard.

The handle of the knife he used was later found by police underneath the family's parked car, the blade was discovered nearby and it's tip was lodged in the woman's head.

“This was a killing with a murderous intent by him on the basis of a sequence of events,” Ms Balic said.

The court heard the couple's relationship had been rocky, Peniamina was concerned his children would be taken from him, and he believed his wife was having an affair.

The jury was shown crime scene photos with blood spattered across the dining room and kitchen floors, on kitchen cupboards and the inside of the front door.

Peniamina later told an undercover police officer his wife had tried to kill him, the court heard.

Read more at the Daily Mail