In sentencing, Judge Louis Bidois said this was unprovoked gang violence \u2013 \u201cgang pack mentality at work\u201d \u2013 on a vulnerable victim who couldn\u2019t defend himself.<\/p>\n
He referenced a victim impact statement in which the man, whose injuries included severe bruising, swelling and a haematoma, told how the attack lasted a long time and he thought he was going to be killed.<\/p>\n
The man had been at the Warehouse carpark with another person in the mid-afternoon.<\/p>\n
Ponini-Kara approached him from behind and coward punched him to the side of the head, knocking him down and stealing his red baseball cap.<\/p>\n
The man was then punched by Mulafia, who forcibly took his bag containing $1012.<\/p>\n
Taimanu joined in, kicking and punching the man on the ground, pulling his shorts down and stealing his wallet.<\/p>\n
Moeke also kicked the man on the ground, with Taimanu continuing to slap him around the head.<\/p>\n
It was Mulafia who rendered the man unconscious with a final punch.<\/p>\n
Lawyer Rebecca Plunket, who represented Ponini-Kara and Mulafia at sentencing, said the attack was not pre-meditated.<\/p>\n
Ponini-Kara saw the victim wearing the red cap and mistakenly believed he was associated with a rival gang.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe considered it offensive and that\u2019s why he threw the first punch,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
After that punch, his involvement was limited to verbal encouragement of the others.<\/p>\n
Taimanu and Moeke have already been sentenced for their part in the aggravated robbery and are serving home detention sentences of nine and eight months, respectively.<\/p>\n
The men have each been ordered to pay reparation of $253 for the money stolen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In sentencing, Judge Louis Bidois said this was unprovoked gang violence \u2013 \u201cgang pack mentality at work\u201d \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1344,110,26665,13994,2082,3011,22220,14641,108,3605,111,43,139,69,14727,105,50557,27517,67355,18840,49370,2240],"class_list":["post-489590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-attacked","tag-brutal","tag-carpark","tag-feared","tag-for","tag-four","tag-going","tag-jailed","tag-kicked","tag-men","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-outside","tag-punched","tag-robbed","tag-robbery","tag-unconscious","tag-warehouse","tag-wearing","tag-whakatne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}