By 3 News online staff
The second of two men found guilty of murdering Chinese student Jiayi Li, known as Kiko, has been sentenced to 17 years minimum non-parole.
Honglin Yu, 20, was also given seven years for aggravated robbery when he appeared at the High Court in Auckland today.
Kiko was found in the boot of her car on June 2 last year with 22 stab wounds. The motive of the attack was money.
Yu and 18-year-old Yongxin Li initially pleaded not guilty to the murder and aggravated robbery. However Li changed his plea to guilty and was sentenced to 16 years in prison when he appeared in court earlier this year.
Yu was found guilty after a trial in September.
Li and Yu were arrested shortly after police found surveillance footage of two men making four attempts to use Kiko’ bank card.
Li had a one-way ticket to China booked for the next day.
They were initially only charged with using a document so police had to act quickly so they could lay further charges, otherwise they would probably have been granted bail and chances of gathering further evidence would have been diminished, Senior Sergeant John Sutton, of Avondale CIB, said.
Police contacted TV3's Nightline that night and asked them to include information about the car on their programme and, within 10 minutes of it airing, someone contacted police with the whereabouts of the car and Ms Lee's body was found, Mr Sutton said.
Kiko was doing a business course in Auckland.
3 News