This week marks three years since the killing of Lower Hutt toddler Baby Ru. RNZ's Sam Sherwood spoke with the officer in charge of the investigation about the past three years, where the investigation currently stands, and why it is taking so long to hold anyone accountable.
On Sunday, Baby Ru should be celebrating turning five with his family.
He should be getting ready to start school, meet his teacher and make new friends. Maybe he has a brand new lunch box and backpack.
Tragically, his family will be forced to mark the day without him, but not before they mourn the three-year anniversary of his death.
Thursday marks three years since Baby Ru, officially named Nga Reo Te Huatahi Reremoana Ahipene-Wall, was killed.
Speaking to RNZ, Detective Inspector Nick Pritchard, the officer in charge of the investigation which has now gone on longer than the little boy lived, says a dedicated team is working full-time to bring his family closure.
"They really want to hold those responsible to account."
Operation Huia
Three people were inside the Poole St, Taitā home on October 22, 2023 when Baby Ru suffered blunt force trauma so severe it fractured his skill.
The lead detective told 1News that the investigation team was still searching for evidence. (Source: 1News)
The three people, who police have said are persons of interest are Rosie Morunga, her then-partner Dylan Ross, and the child's mother, Storm Wall.
Wall - who has repeatedly denied being involved in her son's death - has previously spoken at length with RNZ about what she alleges happened to her son and who she claims killed him.
RNZ is unable to report those allegations.
Neither Morunga nor Ross have spoken to the media since the homicide investigation began.
Speaking to RNZ ahead of the three-year anniversary, Pritchard said there hadn't been any engagement with the trio "for some time", but confirmed they all remained persons of interest, with police "looking at all possibilities in terms of criminal liability".
He says the homicide investigation, dubbed Operation Huia, remains active with a "small dedicated team" working full time with oversight from a senior investigating officer.
"We continue to engage with our Crown solicitor and other forensic experts. It's an ongoing situation where we're working through evidential material, assessing it and assessing the criminal liability of any persons of interest."
Asked how close police are to making an arrest, Pritchard says he can't give any timeframes.
"It's a case where we engaged with Crown quite some time ago. Like us, there's a significant amount of material that they had to review, and from that we've got some other inquiry work and forensic work that we're doing as a result."
He says he understands how people looking in from the outside can wonder why it is taking so long to make any arrests.
He says it is "relatively common" for such cases to "take quite some time" due to the complexities involved and the large volume of material gathering during the investigations.
"Then obviously the evaluation and analytical stages we go through, seeking our legal advice for these sorts of cases because obviously we have to reach a certain threshold before considering charging any persons.
"So all of that does take time, and then as we get our case independently reviewed, then there will be things that come up that we need to do some further testing on or further work on… we are positive that we're going in the right direction, and we really want to hold those responsible to account."
Pritchard will not say whether police believe more than one person inflicted the fatal injuries, or if they have established why a piece of fabric was around Baby Ru's neck when he arrived at hospital.
He also spoke of the difficulties of a case with no "direct eyewitnesses".
"We've got a little boy who's tragically lost his life, and you know can't tell us exactly what happened… so you have to build a case around that through a wide variety of ways… it's actually building up the story through facts and evidence that can actually speak for the young child."
Asked how much police believe they know about what happened on the day, Pritchard says police have a "good picture… in terms of timeframes and obviously injuries and other aspects of the incident."
'It's not too late'
Three years into the investigation, Pritchard says the team has come a "long way", but says he has "no doubt" there are people out there who have information police need and he urges them to come forward.
He has a message for those responsible.
"It's not too late. Those persons that were responsible, or person, knows what they have done. It's not too late to actually get the conscience to come forward and do the right thing,"
"Whatever the mechanism of force used to cause that injury would have been quite significant. So for somebody to do that and actually not have the conscience to come forward is quite disturbing."
Pritchard says on the anniversary of Baby Ru's death the little boy should have been "thriving".
"It's really challenging because you think about it regularly. You think about how hard this will be, how traumatic this will be on that little boy's whanau.
"Not seeing him grow up and go to school and thrive and make friends, all that sort of thing that that young people should have the right to do and not have that taken away from them."
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