Promising athlete falls from grace
A promising athlete with an American college volleyball dream in tatters fell in with the wrong crowd and drove the getaway vehicle for violent robbers.
Philip Takarangi Turia, 20, was one of four young men involved in a Palmerston North petrol station robbery where a metal bar was used to beat a staff member on April 14.
Yesterday, the former national age-group representative faced the court, and not the volleyball kind.
Although Turia’s role was the getaway driver, Judge Lance Rowe said he knew his three teenage cooffenders would inflict extreme violence, as he sentenced him in the Palmerston North District Court to six months’ community detention and 18 months’ intensive supervision.
Turia was signed by Kentucky’s Campbellsville University on a volleyball scholarship in 2017, but had his contract torn up after being caught smoking cannabis.
Turia told the court that upon returning to New Zealand his life went on a ‘‘downhill gradient’’ as the demise of his sports career began to sink in.
The former Palmerston North Boys’ High School student, who also represented the New Zealand under-19 and under-20 teams, said he fell in with the wrong crowd and was directed by known Manawatu¯ criminal Sonny Broughton to commit the robbery. Turia waited in a nearby car park as three others entered the Tremaine Ave Gull store disguised with masks and armed with a metal bar.
One of the teenagers put the staff member in a headlock and hit him with the weapon several times over the head, neck and shoulders.
The bandit forced him to open the till before punching him several times in the back. They fled with about $1000 cash and tobacco.
The court was told the staff member’s wife was pregnant with their first child and feared he wouldn’t live to see his child’s birth.
He had immigrated to New Zealand, from Pakistan, in 2013, to set up a new life but was working long hours in a low-paying job.
‘‘He was pleased when he knew you had been caught and he was safe,’’ the judge told Turia.
Although another university had expressed interest in signing Turia, the conviction would ‘‘almost certainly’’ stop him from crossing the United States border again, Turia said in front of 13 wha¯ nau members in the public gallery.
Defence lawyer Paul Murray had asked for a discharge without conviction, but the judge said he couldn’t uphold it because of the serious nature of the offending. Turia had already been discharged without conviction last year for drink-driving.
Turia apologised to his victim, family and the court for his part in the robbery.
‘‘I take responsibility for this,’’ he said through teary eyes.
‘‘In no world should someone be assaulted the way [the victim] was at work.
‘‘Returning home, I felt I had lost my opportunity and everything had gone down the drain.
‘‘Yes, I made a mistake, a huge one. But this offence woke me up.’’
Turia worked as a teacher aide at Feilding’s North Street School, helping a pupil with autism, and coached the school’s volleyball and basketball sides.