No parole for drug family patriarch
The head of a family-based Wairarapa drug ring has been denied parole at his first hearing.
Wayne Moewaka Namana, 61, was at pains to point out he was not a gang member but the Parole Board said he had been associating with gang members, including through his own family.
He was sentenced to five years and seven months’ jail in July but had been in custody since the police swooped on several Wairarapa sites in December 2017.
He had his first parole hearing in October, marking one-third of his sentence served. He led a ring that controlled a significant slice of the Wairarapa methamphetamine market, with the group profiting by perhaps $1.13 million in 2017, one judge calculated.
The Parole Board’s decision, released this week, said Namana apparently regretted his offending and wanted to become positively engaged with his community again. He was well connected within the Wairarapa Ma¯ori community and he may well have a lot to offer them.
But the board said he should address his offending in an effective way before being released on parole.
Namana wanted to move to the Ma¯ori focus unit at Rimutaka
Prison, which the board said was ‘‘entirely appropriate and understandable’’. It said Namana had significant community support.
The home that was proposed as his address if he had been released was still the subject of police action to forfeit it as having been the proceeds of crime.
Namana was charged, along with three of his children. In the days that followed their arrests, a member of their extended family, Michael Patrick Sheeran Hanna, 30, was found in Auckland with 30kg of methamphetamine.
Hanna was one of the Wairarapa ring’s main suppliers and he was sentenced to 12 years and eight months’ jail.