Wirihana was sent to prison for seven years, with no possibility of parole for half that time.
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 in Hastings, on November 15, 2018.
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 gang member.
Peters left the tangi after the dispute, but Wirihana followed him down the suburban Hastings street and attacked him again on the grass verge several hundred metres away, punching him and stomping on his head.
The coronial inquiry into Peters’ death was deferred until the criminal proceedings ended in June, and Coroner Ian Telford’s findings have now been released.
Coroner Telford determined the cause of death as complications from blunt force head trauma, arising from the assault.
He said the manner of death was homicide.
Peters was first taken to Hawke’s Bay Regional Hospital in Hastings after being found bleeding on the grass verge, but transferred to Wellington several days later when his condition deteriorated.
He was declared brain-dead on November 22, 2018, and formally pronounced dead on November 24.
Coroner Telford said that during his inquiry, a specialist doctor alerted him to a medication error that occurred while Peters was in Wellington Hospital.
Peters required an operation to insert a stent on a dissected artery, which was causing bleeding in the brain.
The procedure was initially considered successful but Peters developed persistent high blood pressure despite medical interventions.
Concerned clinicians arranged for an urgent scan but before this could be done, Peters developed the signs of a “catastrophic” deterioration.
Emergency neurosurgery was carried out.
While Peters was in the intensive care unit (ICU), nurses noticed that a syringe containing metaraminol, used to increase blood pressure, had been placed in a syringe driver labelled for labetalol, which is used to lower blood pressure.
“As a result, Mr Peters had been receiving a medication that increased his blood pressure when clinicians believed they were administering treatment to reduce it,” Coroner Telford said.
After reviewing clinical records, an expert advising the coroner concluded that the error most likely occurred during the handover from the operating theatre to the ICU after surgery.
In the expert’s opinion, the metaraminol had been administered appropriately during surgery, but the syringe was inadvertently connected to the driver after Peters returned to the ICU.
The metaraminol infusion was discontinued and Peters’ blood pressure normalised, but his condition continued to deteriorate.
“On the totality of the evidence, I am satisfied that the medication error occurred after Mr Peters had suffered a catastrophic and non-survivable intracranial haemorrhage and did not cause or contribute to his death,” Coroner Telford said.
He said the mistake had already been the subject of a formal review by Health New Zealand, and a number of “system improvements” had been made.
These included changes to syringe-driver systems, medication identification processes and clinical handover procedures.
Because of this, the coroner said he did not consider that any further comments or recommendations were necessary.
Justice delayed by false alibi
Erueti Wirihana appears in the Napier District Court for sentencing, for the manslaughter of Eddie Peters. Photo / Ric Stevens
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.
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.
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