“For years I pitied you,” she told Wirihana from the floor of the courtroom.
”Being Māori, I feel sadness for our people and our culture.
“Gangs, violence, drugs and alcohol are what you and a lot of our people turn to,” Peters-Prisk said.
“I never felt anger towards you until I first saw your face in court. You walked out with the facade of a tough guy,” she said
“I see you, though. You’re just a pathetic little boy.”
The court was told that Wirihana first punched Peters when Peters turned up at the tangi of his old friend Samson Wirihana, Erueti’s father, on November 15, 2018.
Peters then left the tangi but Wirihana followed him down the suburban Hastings street and attacked him again on the grass verge several hundred metres away.
Peters, 45, sometimes known to his friends as “Eddie Spaghetti”, died in Wellington Hospital surrounded by his whānau on November 24, from the injuries he received when Wirihana assaulted him the previous week.
Wirihana was sent to prison for seven years, with no parole for half that time, on the manslaughter charge.
He was originally charged with murder, and a trial had been scheduled on that charge before he pleaded guilty to manslaughter in April.
The court was told today that the manslaughter charge was laid after medical experts could not determine which of the blows had caused Peters’ fatal injuries.
It took seven years to bring Wirihana to justice because his partner falsely claimed for years that she was with him on the night Peters died, providing an alibi.
That deception came to an end when the partner talked about the alibi in a phone call with Wirihana when he was in prison in 2022, for unrelated reasons.
That phone call, recorded by prison authorities, was obtained by police under a court order.
It ended with Wirihana screaming at his partner in an expletive-laden rant that told her she would be the one who “sinks the ship” because of things she was saying on the call.
“You just f***** up. Quite a bit,” he told her.
Eddie Peters died in 2018. Photo / Supplied
Samson Wirihana, who died from a terminal illness, and his son were both patched members of the Hastings chapter of the Mongrel Mob.
Peters was not a mob member but attended the tangi to pay respects to Samson, because he was a friend who had known him for many years.
While there, he got into an altercation with Erueti Wirihana, who punched him on the jaw, knocking him to the ground.
Wirihana later chased Peters down the street when he tried to leave the tangi.
Wirihana caught up with Peters and assaulted him again, punching and stomping on him.
Residents at the property outside of which that attack took place discovered Peters with head injuries in a pool of blood on the grass verge beside their driveway, a few metres from their door.
Peters was taken to Hawke’s Bay Hospital in Hastings and spent several days there, but was well enough to leave the hospital for brief periods to visit relatives and collect some clothes.
However, on November 19, his condition deteriorated and he suffered two seizures. A CT scan revealed bleeding around the brain, and he was airlifted to Wellington Hospital.
His condition deteriorated further and on November 22, Peters was declared brain dead. On the morning of November 24, he was formally declared deceased.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.