Violent deportee returns to jail
A robber who set fire to a taxi with the driver pretending to be unconscious in the open boot, has been sentenced to six years and seven months’ jail.
Bronson Boudine Samson, 24, lit the fire with the driver still unconscious, as far as he was aware, from the beating Samson inflicted.
Samson pleaded guilty to two charges of aggravated robbery, one each of aggravated wounding, kidnapping, and arson, and five charges of using bank cards he had taken in the first robbery.
He has to serve at least three years and three months in jail before he can be considered for parole.
He had been sent home from Australia after being detained on Christmas Island where he met Jade Richard Barton with whom he committed the robberies.
In Australia he served jail terms for crimes also involv- ing gratuitous violence and the latest robberies happened soon after he was deported, Justice Peter Churchman said.
At the High Court in Wellington, the judge said the taxi driver suffered serious cuts, and cracked ribs.
The driver, Odesho Shemon, believed he would be killed. He had come from Iraq and struggled to establish a life for himself and his family. He was so traumatised he could not return to taxi driving, or any other work, since the robbery.
He was robbed of $350 cash, and the damage to the cab cost $900 to repair.
There was cruelty in locking the injured driver in the boot. The driver still suffered the physical and psychological effects of the attack, the judge said.
Samson’s lawyer, Kevin Preston, said Samson was ‘‘dumped’’ back in New Zealand with no support, and all his family were still in Australia. Off alcohol and drugs Samson seemed intelligent and respectful. Samson said he had little recollection of the incident and he was thankful it was not worse.
Barton, 25, was found guilty of charges relating to the taxi driver, except the arson of which he was acquitted. Barton is awaiting sentence on those charges and another aggravated robbery.
The attack last August was the second robbery the pair had committed in 12 hours. Their first victims were two recently arrived foreign students whose phones, bank cards, and other property were taken from them on Petone beach.
They were also traumatised by the experience.
Shemon was attacked early the following morning when he stopped his taxi in an industrial area at the bottom of the Ngauranga Gorge.
He was beaten unconscious and put in the boot of the taxi for about two hours while Samson went on a ‘‘tiki tour’’, as Barton later described it to police.
When the taxi was abandoned in an secluded area of a north Wellington suburb, Shemon pretended to still be unconscious when the boot was opened.
The robbers left and it wasn’t until Shemon smelt smoke that he got out of the boot and extinguished a fire that had been lit in the driver’s seat of the cab.
Corrections confirmed to Stuff that Samson was not subject to a returning offender order when he was sent home from Australia.