The bus that would have spirited Maaka Hakiwai and his brother away to safety was in view.
As it pulled up just past the roundabout of Oakwood Road on Main Road West in King’s Park, the 17-year old would have heard the grind of its gears as he took his last breath.
To say Maaka was unlucky that day was an understatement.
He and his brother Nate had missed an earlier bus by the skin of their teeth and waited a full 15 minutes before grim fate would intervene.
Joshua Horton has pleaded not guilty to murder
Makaa’s basketball top after being stabbed to death on Grand Final Day 2019
Maaka Hakiwai (right), 17, was killed and his ‘best friend’ brother Nate (left) was left fighting for life
Josh Horton will spend the weekend awaiting his fate too as a jury of 12 continues to deliberate if he is guilty of Maaka’s murder and seriously injuring his brother.
CCTV footage released to Daily Mail Australia shows the frantic aftermath of the daytime stabbing, which occurred on AFL Grand Final day in 2019 northwest of Melbourne.
The brothers had been planning to hit the gym when Horton’s two mates took a liking to Nate’s hat and decided they just had to have it.
When Nate fought back, Horton dashed from a waiting vehicle armed with a long knife.
Maaka had been held in a headlock when Horton speared him from behind with an upward thrust of his blade.
The knife penetrated his liver before slicing through his aorta – the largest artery in the human body.
Maaka managed to stagger about 10 metres down the road before he bled out on the footpath.
Nate was stabbed twice in the leg by Horton just seconds after he killed his brother.
He was lucky not to have bled out too.
The whole bloody affair took just 16 seconds.
Maaka Hakiwai (right), 17, was killed and his ‘best friend’ brother Nate (left) were ambushed while waiting for a bus
Moments from tragedy. The Hakiwai brothers walk to the bus stop where they would be attacked
It was a brazen attack, performed on a busy section of road with plenty of foot traffic.
Stunned bystanders can be seen trying to wave down cars as one boy lay dead and another close enough to it.
Police arrived a little under two minutes after the attack was called in.
By then, Maaka was already dead and Nate had lost close to two litres of blood.
Horton didn’t know if he had killed one or both of the boys.
He told his mates, who swiped the hat off Nate before making their escape, that he couldn’t believe he had just ‘shanked’ them.
Jurors must now decide whether they accept Horton is a cold blooded murderer or that he acted in teenage haste without thinking about the consequences of his actions.
The youths had been cruising about town looking to ‘drill’ someone, when they spotted the brothers waiting for the bus.
Horton sat in the car as his two mates, who cannot be named due to their age, approached them and drummed up a conversation.
Haunting footage from the scene showed paramedics working on one of the brothers as he lay in a pool of his own blood on the quiet suburban street
Markers show where the attack happened and how far Maaka got before he fell to the ground and died
A jacket was found tossed into a tree at the crime scene
The jury has heard Horton had no idea that his mates planned to rob the boys and when he rushed out of the car, he had been blindly trying to help them after witnessing the scuffle.
‘Run me that hat,’ one of the youth’s told Nate.
Then they pounced, grabbing his hat and punching him in the face when he remonstrated.
Crown prosecutor Ray Gibson, QC told the jury Horton knew exactly what he was doing when he rushed out of the Toyota Rav 4 he had been a passenger in.
Within seconds of jumping from the vehicle, he would grab Maaka from behind and stab him just under the chest with a 10cm blade.
Maaka was able to stumble down the footpath before he fell and bled out
Maaka (pictured) was fatally stabbed in a quiet street in Kings Park, Melbourne in 2019
Maaka (pictured in his youth) had only recently come to Melbourne from Queensland
He then turned his attention to Nate.
‘Life can be a matter of chance,’ Mr Gibson told the jury.
‘Maaka Hakiwai probably thought that he was a bit luckless missing the 2.30pm bus on that Spring day … tragically he was far more than a bit luckless.’
Horton has pleaded not guilty to murdering Maaka and seriously injuring his brother.
Mr Gibson told the jury the only acceptable verdict in the case could be murder.
He claimed Horton was well aware of the plan to rob the boys as he was seated directly between his co-offenders in the back seat of the car they were in.
Mr Gibson said the jury should accept Horton had no lawful excuse for getting involved in the fracas as he knew it was a robbery.
Any other suggestion would be ‘utterly fanciful’, he said.
‘He knew exactly what was going down,’ the jury was told.