Stabbing in bail-place ‘cauldron’

Killer Beez man knifed in fight at boarding house helping offenders before courts

The sentencing of a former Mongrel Mob man who stabbed a Killer Beez member in the head after a fight over $50 has revealed conditions akin to a powder keg inside a Māngere boarding house meant to help people on bail.

Nui Rangirangi, 35, was sentenced at the Auckland High Court yesterday to more than four years in prison for repeatedly stabbing the rival gang member five times, including twice in the head, after losing a fist fight over $50. He says he has now distanced himself from the Mongrel Mob and was supported by his family in court.

Justice Anne Hinton said the victim was lucky not to suffer permanent damage from the attack.

During the trial, it was put to the victim that he was the one with the knife, not Rangirangi, to which the victim said that if he had had a knife, the other party would be dead.

The judge gave discounts for abuse and deprivation in Rangirangi’s childhood. She acknowledged the victim forgave Rangirangi and did not want to proceed with charges.

But Hinton expressed concern over conditions in the Grace Foundation boarding house in 2020 when the attack took place. It appeared drug and alcohol use was commonplace and rival gang members were housed together with “very loose” supervision, she said.

“This does not strike me as a sound situation to place men together, particularly from different gangs,” Hinton said.

The Grace Foundation offers accommodation and rehabilitation programmes, targeted at people on bail or serving community-based sentences. Many clients would be remanded in custody while awaiting trial or sentence were it not for the foundation’s offers of accommodation and support, which can help alleged offenders obtain electronically monitored bail, particularly those with criminal histories whom the courts would be reluctant to release on unsupervised ordinary bail.

Rangirangi was on electronically monitored bail at the time of the attack and has convictions for violence including injuring with intent and aggravated robbery causing grievous bodily harm.

Hinton described the environment in the Māngere boarding house on July 23, 2020, as a “cauldron”, with simmering gang tensions exacerbated by drug and alcohol use. The victim had drunk three boxes of RTDs before the attack, the equivalent of 36 drinks. Witnesses said all the men present had been using methamphetamine.

At yesterday’s sentencing, Rangirangi — who had pleaded not guilty and was convicted after a judge-alone trial — admitted his involvement, expressing his remorse and apologising in a letter.

Hinton allowed discounts for cultural factors, remorse and apology from a starting point of six years in jail. On the charge of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, he was sentenced to four years and three months in prison.