Six months after Sean Remnant’s death, his family spoke exclusively to The Post about the ongoing struggle to come to terms with their loss while so many questions remain unanswered. Katie Ham reports.
Every day that passes delivers a fresh blow for the Remnant whānau.
At every table, there’s a chair left empty ‒ a quiet, painful space once filled by Sean Remnant, with his ever-so-slightly crooked smile and signature cheese cutter hat.
Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Easter have all come and gone, their usual rhythm disrupted. Where once Sean’s gentle teasing of his siblings filled the air, a heavy silence now lingers.
But perhaps the hardest day of all came in May, when Sean’s only child turned seven ‒ the young boy’s celebrations missing his steadfast companion through countless mornings of toast, wave checks, and school runs.
It has now been six months since Sean, a 43-year-old painter and decorator from Tītahi Bay, was killed.
For Sean’s sister, who The Post agreed not to name to protect her safety, “every little thing that passes is another punch to the gut, another reminder that he’s not there”.
On November 30, Sean’s wife and son dropped him off to have beers at a house in the sleepy Porirua suburb of Elsdon on their way back from celebrating a 50th birthday.
In the early hours of December 1, Sean was taken to Wellington Hospital in a critical condition. He never regained consciousness and died three days later.
But what happened inside the Kotuku St house remains a mystery. All that is known for sure is that Sean sustained a serious injury to the left side of his head, described on his interim coroner’s certificate as caused by “blunt force”.
“Life goes on and in lots of ways that’s the worst part. It’s simply not fair that everything keeps going on without him,” Sean’s younger sister told The Post.
One particularly harsh reminder that time was passing came when Supergroove performed in Wellington in April.
“We used to have the tape, and grew up listening to Supergroove on our ghetto blaster. That was the last thing Sean had tickets to.
“And that’s the thing when someone is killed ‒ he had plans, he had an anticipated future. But slowly, the things he had tickets to are running out.”
As an avid NRL fan, Sean’s family arranged an event they called “Sunday Session for Sean” for his loved ones to gather together to watch the first Warriors game of the season. Hundreds attended the event across Wellington, Christchurch and Nelson.
But the centre of the family’s grief is Sean’s son, now seven, who has started to ask: “Why would someone do this to my dad?”
“The rest of us are the ricochet effect, but at the core is a little boy who’s had his father taken away from him. We’ve known grief as a family before, but this is different.
“Someone took Sean from us and we don’t know who. We don’t even know why. So we’re going to keep asking and keep pushing until we have those answers.”
A fortnight after Sean died, police announced that they were treating his death as a homicide. Six months on, Detective Senior Sergeant Pete Middlemiss said police are continuing their investigation.
To date, no arrests have been made, but The Post understands there were four other people at the address when Sean sustained his fatal injuries.
“While no charges have been laid at this time, police continue to work through information gathered since the time of Sean’s death.
“We would still like to hear from anyone who has information that could assist our enquiries into the assault on Sunday 1 December, which ultimately led to his death,” Middlemiss said.
But as the months pass, the pain of Sean’s absence continues to deepen for his family.
“We feel so powerless and voiceless against this system that we’d been thrust into. And then at the heart of it all is Sean who we’ve lost and miss dearly.
“We just so desperately don’t want him to become an unsolved homicide. We won’t ever forget him, but we don’t want other people to forget about him either.”
And, as the Remnant family sits down at another table without Sean, the only four people who might know what happened to him continue to sit down with their loved ones.
“Every day that they don’t come forward and speak makes it worse for us. They’ve left a little boy without his dad, and he doesn’t understand why.”
Anyone with any information about what happened to Sean is asked to contact the police either online through 105.police.govt.nz or by calling 105, referencing the file number: 241201/7304.
Information can also be reported anonymously via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111
- The Post