P fight: ‘I’ve lost an eye - but all good’
A Waikato gang leader who declared war on methamphetamine dealers now claims to have lost an eye as the price of his stand.
Tribal Huk president Jamie Pink said last week that his gang had managed to close 14 P houses in the Ngaruawahia area.
Yesterday morning he drove his bloodstained and bullet-riddled vehicle into the Hamilton car park of the Waikato Times - sister paper to The Dominion Post - and said he had lost an eyeball in a confrontation on Waikato back roads some time over the weekend.
With a leather patch over his right eye, and sporting bandages on his arm and hand, he told a reporter: ‘‘It is over.’’
He said the eradication of P dealers from Ngaruawahia was finished and that, despite being a little battered and bruised, he was OK.
‘‘I’ve lost an eyeball, but good,’’ he said with a laugh.
A gang associate earlier warned that there were loaded guns in Pink’s heavily armoured black Ford Explorer.
‘‘Be careful, there is live ammunition in the car, and tell the police to be careful too,’’ the associate said.
Police have since picked up the vehicle and are investigating. all
‘‘We will investigate what has gone on with the vehicle, and then decide what to do from there,’’ Senior Sergeant Peter van der Wetering said.
The vehicle was blasted with dozens of bullet holes, including some through the front windscreen, and the rear window was completely shot out.
Inside, the four-wheel-drive was armoured with bags of concrete powder on the passenger seat, presumably to stop bullets. A large punching bag and a metal plate had also been arranged in a similar manner.
It is not the first time Pink has arrived at the Waikato Times offices to promote his gang’s war on drugs in Ngaruawahia. On Friday, he turned up with a sledgehammer, suggesting it had been used to shut down P houses and that he now wanted to auction it off for charity.
The hammer had 14 notches on it to represent the 14 houses the gang had supposedly closed.
‘‘I brought the sledgehammer to you to let you know that it’s over. Now we are back to our main job of feeding the kids,’’ he said.
His anti-drug stance came after talking to the more than 1000 children the gang members feed through their free school lunch run.
‘‘I did a survey about a month ago with the kids. Out of those kids, about 75 per cent of them were P-affected,’’ he said. ‘‘Their families have got big problems.’’
He said he was not blaming police for failing to tackle the drug epidemic.
‘‘I don’t talk to the cops – they don’t like me and I don’t like them. But they’ve got a job to do and without them, we’re pretty buggered. The whole country has lost the war on P.
‘‘The whole bloody world has, so don’t blame the cops. You want to blame someone, blame the bloody dealers.’’
Ngaruawahia Community Church pastor David Wells said yesterday: ‘‘It’s been evident that it’s a far bigger problem than what the police can address. They have enough on their plate, and I think in many respects they’re probably powerless to do much.
‘‘It comes down to the individuals, the families, the parents who know what is going on in their family, and the way they are educating them in regards to the dangers of these things.’’