Amber-Rose Rush

16-year-old Amber-Rose had worked at a supermarket and aspired to be a police dog handler. She loved her family, art and going to the beach. To her family Amber-Rose was known as "Peanut", "Ambie-Angel", or "Short". The "caring, cheeky, spunky" teenager loved potato salad and chicken nuggets and often spent her pay packet on her family, especially her nephew and niece, who she adored. "She was completely selfless," her mother said. Amber-Rose left school a year earlier because of problems with cyberbullying, but "made peace" with her former tormentors. "She was loving life," her mother said. "I can't described how missed she is." On 3 February 2018, Amber-Rose failed to show up to work at New World Centre City in central Dunedin. Her mother, Lisa-Ann Mills, went to wake her daughter and found her face down in a pool of blood, her head covered by pillows. Mother and daughter had gone shopping the night before. At 10.30pm, Mills told her daughter she loved her and kissed her goodnight. In mid-2017 when Amber-Rose was 15 she had met Venod Skantha – a 30-year-old doctor at Dunedin Hospital - through mutual friends. In early January 2018 she claimed that Skantha molested her after a night of heavy drinking. She told a friend she thought she may have been drugged after waking up with Skantha's hand allegedly down her pants and her top and bra removed. She also claimed he offered to pay her up to $20,000 to have sex with him. She told her friend she was no longer speaking to him. On 2 February 2018 Amber-Rose posted screenshots of a conversation with Skantha on Instagram. In the messages she makes claims he's been supplying alcohol to minors and "touching up young girls". She claims she's taking her evidence to police and the Southern District Health Board. At 10.58pm CCTV captures someone who appears to be a mutual friend of the two walking towards The Glen in Dunedin. The mutual friend, a teenager, sends a screenshot of the Instagram post to Skantha. Skantha and Amber-Rose have a heated exchange about the post over Facebook messenger. Their last messages were sent at 11.25pm. Skantha calls his teenage friend in front of several other teen witnesses, before he tells the youth he's coming to pick him up. At 11.39pm The South Road CCTV system captures a silver BMW belonging to Skantha driving towards The Glen. At 11.55pm Amber-Rose sends her last message to her boyfriend, Kristin Clark. Shortly after 9am Amber-Rose's body is discovered by her mother at their Clermiston Avenue home. Emergency services are called and she's pronounced dead at the scene. In 2018 Venod Skantha is unanimously found guilty by a jury of stabbing Amber-Rose to death in her bed. She died from an 11 cm-long incised wound to the left side of her neck, which penetrated her carotid artery and windpipe, causing her to bleed to death. She also had stab wounds to the back of her neck and two "superficial" horizontal cuts to her throat. Amber-Rose's mother Lisa-Ann said the murder accused had "stolen her soul". She commits suicide on 11 June 2018, four months after Amber's death. Skantha was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 19 years. On 14 April 2021, the New Zealand Court of Appeal dismissed Skantha's appeal and affirmed his conviction. Skantha died at the Otago Corrections Facility, near Milton on 14 April 2021.

See also: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/dunedin-doctor-murder-venod-skantha-d....