No parole for man who beat up couples

A man who carried out a vicious random attack on two Auckland couples has been denied parole again.

Jono Paul Wilson, 27, appeared before the Parole Board on May 17 after being jailed for 12 years in 2009 for the violence.

The couples, who did not know each other, were attacked separately in the early hours of the morning in January 2008 by Wilson and three other teens.

Wilson was said to have approached one couple as they walked along Milford Beach and asked the man if he’d ever met a real gangster, before attacking him with a bat and threatening to stab him. The man’s girlfriend tried to intervene but was also attacked, and swam across an estuary to escape.

She suffered a fractured eye socket and a broken finger while her partner suffered lacerations to his face and a fractured skull.

Hours later, another young couple who were walking home from a Takapuna restaurant were set upon by the group with a metal pole and were later found unconscious.

The woman underwent brain surgery and needed a titanium plate fitted in her head.

Wilson later pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery, wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and various other charges relating to the attacks.

He became eligible for parole last year but was declined.

At his May hearing the board described his ‘‘troubling’’ regression in prison.

Although he had become a mentor in a prison programme and had made good progress, there had been a series of incidents that left the board unsatisfied that he didn’t pose an undue risk to the public, it said.

According to the report Wilson had disobeyed a prison order and ‘‘pushed boundaries somewhat’’.

‘‘The bottom line however is that he is apparently very good when he is busy,’’ panel convenor Alan Ritchie said in the report.

Wilson told the board he was ‘‘extremely keen’’ for his reintegration plans to continue, which the board supported.

"We have urged Mr Wilson to try to keep his head down as much as possible and to remind himself that things are not necessarily easy as a serving prisoner,’’ the report said.

A Warbirds open day marks a special World War II anniversary

D-Day on June 6, 1944, marked the start of Operation Overlord, the Allies’ re-entry into Europe.

The New Zealand Warbirds Association is marking the 72nd anniversary of D-Day with a Warbirds open day at its Ardmore Airfield base on June 5.

The event will feature the return of the Royal New Zealand Air Force to Ardmore and the first public display in Auckland of its newly commissioned