Mob man guilty of drug debt abduction
A Hawke’s Bay Mongrel Mob leader has been found guilty of kidnap and sexually violating a teenager because she failed to pay a drug debt.
Alexander ‘Sandy’ Tamati, 60, Hagen Henare, 28, and Neil Benson, 28, were on trial in the Napier District Court this week facing a raft of charges for offending late last year.
Henare and Benson each pleaded guilty to two charges of kidnap on the second day of the trial, and the Crown agreed not to proceed on the other charges to which they were a party.
Tamati pleaded guilty to a charge of supplying methamphetamine to the woman at the start of the trial, but defended four charges of unlawful sexual connection, two of kidnap, aggravated assault, assault on a female, assault with a blunt instrument and threatening to kill or do grievous bodily harm.
The jury retired on Wednesday afternoon and took just one and a half hours to return guilty verdicts on all charges against Tamati.
The men will be sentenced next month.
Crown prosecutor Steve Manning opened the case on Monday by telling jurors it involved a 19-year-old woman who had purchased about $800 worth of the drug from Tamati and was unable to pay him.
Manning said Tamati was a senior member of the Mongrel Mob and a former president of the gang’s Aotearoa chapter.
The woman described to the court a series of incidents in which Tamati assaulted her, threatened her, and sexually violated her. She said she knew all of the men.