Annoyed arsonist tried to torch Sallies and ATM machine
It was Guy Fawkes Night and Kelvin Tuhakaraina’s synthetic cannabis, cigarettes and money had been stolen from him. He felt he had to give expression to his annoyance.
Someone had left a mattress outside the Salvation Army store, which was in a building called Wickham House, in Hamilton’s Five Crossroads shopping centre.
About 3.45am on November 6, 2020 he picked it up and dragged it to the building’s main entrance.
Tuhakaraina positioned the mattress against the aluminium joinery door and tile wall and, using a lighter, set it on fire.
He sat and watched the mattress burn and, once he was sure it was fully ablaze, got up and walked away.
The fire engulfed the entranceway.
A cleaner at work at a nearby business saw smoke coming from Wickham House and called 111.
Firefighters extinguished the blaze, which caused about $22,000 worth of damage.
The whole thing had been captured on CCTV. Tuhakaraina was quickly identified, spoken to, and arrested by the police.
The incident led, in part, to Kelvin Hohaia Tuhakaraina, 60, being sentenced to two years and one month in jail when he appeared in the Hamilton District Court on Wednesday.
He had been charged with a raft of offences including arson, intentionally damaging a building by fire, wilful trespass and three counts of theft.
As the court was told, the Wickham House incident wasn’t Tuhakaraina’s only inflammatory act.
On the morning of August 31, 2021 he and an associate drove to a Mobil service station in Waharoa, just north of Matamata.
He put petrol into the car and then went to the night pay window, where he paid for the petrol and bought a packet of cigarettes, which were put into a secure drawer for him to access.
He took the cigarettes but also swiped a bottle of hand sanitiser, which was on the counter outside the secure window for customers.
He and his associate then drove into Matamata and parked near the ANZ bank, and he used the ATM there.
But, once he had completed his transaction, Tuhakaraina deliberately placed his lit cigarette into the receipt bin attached to the front of the machine, before leaving.
The burning cigarette ignited the receipts in the bin.
A passer-by spotted smoke coming from the machine and called 111. Members of the Matamata Volunteer Fire Brigade were quickly on the scene and had to break open the receipt bin lock so the fire could be extinguished before it could spread.
When later spoken to by the police, he said he had put the cigarette into the receipt bin because he thought it was an ashtray.
Another theft charge related to him shoplifting a pie, a can of Coke, and a chocolate bar from the Stop N Shop store in Waharoa on September 2, 2021.
He told the police he did not have to pay for the goods, because the shop owners had brought Covid into the country.
In court, Tuhakaraina’s counsel Mike Curran said years of drug abuse combined with some mental health issues had affected his client’s decisionmaking abilities.
While Tuhakaraina had made a good start in life, things had gone awry in his teenaged years.
Judge Glen Marshall took a starting point of three years and 10 months in jail.
A 25% discount for his guilty pleas, 10% for his mental health difficulties, and a further 10% in recognition of the findings of a cultural report knocked 21 months off that sentence.