Truck driver has sunset years with grandkids snuffed out
A 79-year-old truck driver on the verge of stepping off the wheel of work into his final years as a doting grandfather had that prospect snuffed out while travelling along State Highway 29 to Tauranga. Coming towards him was Livai Nuku, 25. Nuku had earlier been swerving all over the road as he made a speedy descent down the Kaimai Ranges towards Hamilton.
It was an erratic path that, about 7.30am on June 29, 2022, led him to smash into and kill the truck driver and, ultimately, took him to a two-year stay behind bars.
Inside the car he had borrowed from a mate was a .22 airgun pistol, several hundred airgun pellets, a bong, and several pre-packed bags of cannabis head.
And inside him was an unspecified amount of THC - the chemical component of cannabis that gets people high.
Other drivers were so alarmed by his bad driving they called the police. As Nuku flew through Te Poi and Hinuera, a patrol car moved swiftly to intercept him, further down State Highway 29.
But they were not swift enough and he never got that far.
Before his hooning got him to where the police were lying in wait near Piarere, Nuku - who at the time was doing about 115kph - veered over the centre line and straight into the path of a light truck travelling the opposite way.
Behind the wheel of that vehicle was Auckland man John Waite, who had no chance of avoiding the head-on crash.
Waite was not wearing a seatbelt and in the moment of impact was flung through the windscreen, out onto the road.
He was airlifted to Waikato Hospital in a critical condition, while firefighters cut Nuku out of the mangled remains of the Subaru Forrester he had been driving.
Waite underwent emergency surgery, during which his left leg was amputated above the knee. In the crash his scalp had been “degloved”, his shoulder dislocated, and several other parts of his body suffered deep lacerations.
To make matters worse, he contracted Covid while in hospital, which worsened his already precarious position - and added to the anguish of family members, who were not allowed to get near him without full protective gear.
He never regained consciousness and his condition continued to degrade until, on July 6, the decision was made to switch off the machines that were keeping him alive.
On Tuesday, in the Hamilton District Court, Nuku, 25, was jailed for two years on charges of aggravated careless driving causing death, possession of cannabis for supply, and driving contrary to an alcohol interlock licence.
He was meant to be driving only a car equipped with such a device after earlier being convicted on a charge of contravening a previous “zero alcohol” licence.
He was also sentenced on Tuesday on two charges of assaulting a family member - his now-former partner - and one charge of failing to appear in court.
The sentencing followed a harrowing victim statement read by a member of Waite’s family, whose name was suppressed by Judge Noel Cocurullo.
The family member told Nuku that she realised she “hated [the person who did this] with a vengeance, and I did not even know who you were”.
The injustice of the situation had fundamentally changed her, she said. She now suffered from “simmering anger that just sits there, waiting for an excuse to come out”.
Waite, a great-grandfather, had been planning to retire from his job as a delivery driver in December of that year. He was “a good man” who had taught his children and grandchildren life skills - “but there are no skills that can teach you or prepare you for this kind of loss”.