\u201cIt\u2019s obviously very painful listening to the evidence as it brings feelings of sadness and anger at the way Blake died up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am trying to remember all the good things about my son.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee was killed in the prison yard, shortly after his transfer from Whanganui prison to Paremoremo.<\/p>\n
The man responsible for his murder, Siuaki Lisiate, was a senior member of the Crips gang, while Lee was an affiliate of the Mongrel Mob.<\/p>\n
In 2020, there was no set policy on where gang members should be placed in the prison.<\/p>\n
An inquest heard Blake Lee was killed after being transferred to Paremoremo. Photo \/ RNZ<\/p>\n
Paremoremo\u2019s prison director at the time, David Pattinson, was asked if it was practical to separate rival gang members inside.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot unless we built a bigger jail,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be difficult, there are principles around the style of people that come together, what influence they can have on the rest of the prisoner group.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe work hard to maintain a safer environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was questioned by Susan Gray, the lawyer representing Lee\u2019s mother, about the risk of letting a newly transferred prisoner into the yard with different gang members.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe enters into the yard, he greets people in the yard, they greet him,\u201d Pattinson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe acts with confidence in that space, he looks comfortable in that environment, and unfortunately others intervene to change that for him.<\/p>\n
Pattinson said that at the time, before the attack, it looked like a good decision to offer Lee the opportunity to exercise.<\/p>\n
Two years earlier, Lisiate had attacked double murderer Graeme Burton with a shank while both men were doing time in Paremoremo.<\/p>\n
Gray asked Pattinson about Lisiate\u2019s violent past.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou would agree, surely, that Mr Lisiate had a history of extreme violence,\u201d Gray asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t disagree with that,\u201d Pattinson replied.<\/p>\n
Lee\u2019s mother told RNZ she wanted to see members of rival gangs separated in prison.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like Corrections to be accountable for my son\u2019s death but also for gang members from different gangs never to be mixed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
But Pattinson told the lawyer representing Corrections, Claire Paterson, the murder was not gang-related.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of work was done by Corrections in the aftermath of this tragic incident,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWas there any evidence found that this was in fact a gang-related incident?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
There was no evidence to support that, Pattinson said.<\/p>\n
That was despite an earlier High Court memorandum from Lisiate himself, describing gang tensions behind bars as ever-present.<\/p>\n
Pattinson said that if Lee were transferred to Paremoremo again today, he would likely be put in the same unit.<\/p>\n
Later in the day, the inquest heard from the current prison director, Stephen Parr.<\/p>\n
He said the protocols in place today would prevent Lee from being placed into a mix on the day of his arrival.<\/p>\n
Parr spoke about the shank Lisiate had, saying it was not uncommon for makeshift weapons to be made from items in the prison environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe screening procedures in place were then and are now considered appropriate; however, no procedure is foolproof nor immune to human error,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is unfortunate that these procedures were not completed to the required or expected standard on that day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parr said he was not in a position to definitively say whether correct scanning procedures would have detected Lisiate\u2019s shank.<\/p>\n
\u201cStaff acted in accordance with the process that was in place at the time in placing Mr Lee in the yard with that mix of gangs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The inquest before Coroner Alexander Ho continues on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s obviously very painful listening to the evidence as it brings feelings of sadness and anger at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[68501,51,27129,25207,38268,71,42,78,5158,6178,43768,43,1118,8442,40,38,41,39,14638],"class_list":["post-574911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-accountability","tag-auckland","tag-blackwell","tag-corrections","tag-finn","tag-from","tag-headlines","tag-in","tag-man","tag-mother","tag-murdered","tag-news","tag-of","tag-prison","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574911","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=574911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}