Jail terms for gang stabbings
Jail terms totalling 31 years and nine months have been imposed on three Bandidos gang associates and the woman who instigated the planned stabbing of a man she was to marry the next day.
The bloody crime – which happened when the group turned up at a birthday party on a house-bus on Johns Rd, Christchurch on August 30, 2015 – left two men injured and a woman assaulted.
Nicholas Andrew Hanson, 31, a gang prospect, and Stephanie Jane McGrath, 27, pleaded guilty before a trial to charges of wounding two men and assaulting a woman.
At sentencing in the Christchurch District Court yesterday, Hanson – the principal offender – was jailed for 10 years and nine months and McGrath for six years.
Jesse James Winter, 29, and Alvin Ritesh Kumar, a 34-year-old factory hand from Woolston, were found guilty at the trial. Winter was jailed for eight years and Kumar for seven years.
Judge Stephen O’Driscoll said it had been a ‘‘frenzied’’ attack by Hanson that left two victims with slash and stab wounds to the face, head and hands.
Crown prosecutor Donald Matthews said: ‘‘These four people joined together in a common plan to seriously assault someone, knowing that knives were being brought along, with serious consequences’’.
The trial was told that after the stabbing and assault the police found a marriage licence for McGrath for a wedding that was to take place next day. The court heard the couple were in ‘‘a volatile relationship’’ and the group was looking for the groom when the assaults took place. He was not there.
The Crown said the man who came to the door of the house-bus was slashed in the face by Hanson and then stabbed several times.
Hanson then stabbed the second man in the head and the other two members of the group – Kumar and Winter – punched and kicked him.
Hanson kicked the woman to the ground when she tried to intervene and she received a cut to the hand as she tried to protect herself.
As the group left, they were still threatening the groom. They were heard saying that he was ‘‘finished’’ and he was going to die.
Lawyer Alister James said Hanson had written apology letters to the victims.
He had expressed his remorse and he had a $3000 bank cheque available at court to offer as emotional-harm reparations to the victims.
McGrath’s lawyer, Ruth Buddicom, said her client had written apology letters to the victims.
She had been ‘‘clearly devastated when she found out what had occurred’’.
She had succeeded with the work she had done in prison on remand and she was a good candidate for rehabilitation, Buddicom said.
The Crown had said the incident arose from a grievance she had.
‘‘That understates the horror of what she had experienced – there had been elements of terror and real fear,’’ Buddicom told the judge.
Kumar’s lawyer, Richard Maze, said his client was not a gang member and had distanced himself from gang associations.
Andrew Bailey, Winter’s lawyer, said one of the victims had exaggerated the seriousness of his injuries in his evidence at the July trial and in his victimimpact statement.
Judge O’Driscoll said the attack had been on ‘‘completely and utterly innocent victims’’. It was premeditated offending, with a plan for serious violence involving a weapon. The attack had inflicted serious injuries in the course of ‘‘vigilante action’’, but he believed it did not involve gang warfare.