Life taken and one life stopped
Auckland teenager Vincent Skeen has been jailed for five years and two months for stabbing rising league star Luke Tipene.
Skeen appeared at the High Court at Auckland on Tuesday where he was sentenced by Justice Mary Peters.
He was found guilty of the manslaughter of 17-year-old Tipene following a two week jury trial in July. On Tuesday Crown prosecutor Brian Dickey referenced Tipene’s good standing in the west Auckland community where he lived, his blossoming league career, and his devotion to his four sisters and their mother.
In a victim impact statement his mother Terry Wilson says that since Tipene died, in the early hours of November 1 2014, she had become a ‘‘shell of a person’’ who was ‘‘totally, totally paralysed’’.
‘‘From the early hours of Saturday 1 November I have not moved. I lost my soul,’’ she says.
‘‘The impact of that very moment is indescribable and I looked to the heavens and asked for Him to take me too. There are no words to articulate the true impact of the heinous death my son suffered. How, as a mother, am I meant to deal with the fact I wasn’t there for my son in his final horrifying moments?’’
Tipene died from blood loss after a brawl broke out following a Halloween party in Grey Lynn in an incident described as ‘‘tragic’’ by Dickey.
‘‘Nothing will compensate for the loss to the family,’’ he says.
The central issue at trial was Skeen’s intent, with the Crown arguing that an enraged Skeen had purposely attacked Tipene, highlighting his use of a broken bottle on a vulnerable area of Tipene’s body.
Skeen’s defence lawyer Lorraine Smith argued Skeen swung blindly and impulsively. On Tuesday Smith told the court Skeen had offered to plead guilty to manslaughter after he was charged, but the Crown pursued a murder charge instead. She also rejected a pre-sentence report in which the writer had said Skeen had ‘‘maintained his innocence’’.
‘‘He is adamant that he never said he was innocent and that is established by his early offer of a guilty plea to manslaughter. He’s going to have to carry the guilt of Luke Tipene’s death for the rest of his life. The (victim impact statements) have affected him. The memory of what is contained in those statements is going to be with him for ht rest of his life,’’ Smith says.