In a historic first for New Zealand\u2019s justice system, a man has been jailed for manslaughter after his aggressive dogs fatally attacked Neville Thomson.<\/p>\n
The sentence marks a turning point in how the law can hold dog owners accountable – and comes with a plea from the man\u2019s grieving children for dog owners to do better.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery dog owner should prioritise the safety of their pets and the community. By doing so we can prevent tragedies and protect lives,\u201d Thomson\u2019s daughter Nataria Moore said.<\/p>\n
Moore was speaking at Abel Jaye Wira\u2019s sentencing in the High Court at Whang\u0101rei on Friday.<\/p>\n
The 60-year-old was found guilty of manslaughter by a jury after his\u00a0dogs mauled Thomson to death.<\/p>\n
Thomson\u2019s three children\u00a0clutched each other in court as their victim impact statements were read, detailing the trauma they had experienced as a result of Wira and his dogs.<\/p>\n
Their father was a beloved member of the Panguru community who helped out the local marae, neighbours and loved his whenua.<\/p>\n
Moore said she thought it was a joke when her brother called her to say their father was dead, killed by a pack of dogs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world around me paused and I felt like the oxygen had been sucked out of the world,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Moore recalled the regular late-night text chats she would have with her father, while his son Tama said his father would give you the shirt off his back \u201cjust because you liked it\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate the way in which he was taken, it\u2019s left so many unanswered questions,\u201d Tama said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI miss my dad so much but I\u2019ve got to keep on keeping on. As my dad used to say, \u2018there\u2019s no rest for the wicked\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dog owners must do better<\/p>\n
In reading their victim impact statements, the family took the opportunity to send a message to dog owners in\u00a0New Zealand\u00a0to do better.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m deeply concerned since his passing there have been other tragic incidents, including\u00a0Elizabeth Whittaker\u00a0in the Far North and\u00a0Timothy Tu\u2019uaki Rolleston-Bryan. Others have lost their lives in similar circumstances and I take this moment to acknowledge their lives,\u201d Moore said.<\/p>\n
Moore said she wanted to honour her dad\u2019s life by pushing for meaningful change.<\/p>\n
\u201cI urge the authorities to take this opportunity to strengthen regulations and ensure that dog owners are held accountable for the care and control of their animals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aggressive, uncontrollable, dangerous<\/p>\n
In 2022, Wira came to house sit Thomson\u2019s home in Panguru while the latter was in the South Island and brought with him 23 dogs: six adults and 17 puppies.<\/p>\n
When Thomson returned, Wira stayed on with his pets, which he kept confined in a caravan, sometimes unfed for days.<\/p>\n
During a week-long trial in August, witnesses described the dogs as aggressive, uncontrollable and dangerous.<\/p>\n
They had lunged at visitors, mauled the ears off a neighbour\u2019s pig and attacked Wira, resulting in him needing hospital treatment for bite wounds so severe they nearly struck major arteries.<\/p>\n
Wira regularly locked the dogs in a caravan, which had no door handle and was propped closed by a block of wood, at Thomson\u2019s property.<\/p>\n
On the morning of August 4, 2022, Wira was out running errands while Thomson was home on the phone to his partner.<\/p>\n
The dogs, who had not been fed in two days, escaped out of the caravan and mauled Thomson to death.<\/p>\n
When Wira returned to the property and found his friend dead, he had to beat the dogs off with a spade.<\/p>\n
When authorities arrived, two of the dogs were shot on sight, one escaped into the bush and the rest were taken to a local pound and had to be euthanised as they were too aggressive to be rehomed.<\/p>\n
\u2018It was only a matter of time\u2019<\/p>\n
Thomson\u2019s death triggered a lengthy police investigation, and it was not until December 2023, more than a year later, that Wira was charged with being a dog owner of a dog that caused injury or death.<\/p>\n
The charge was upgraded months later to manslaughter, the first such case in New Zealand\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
Crown lawyer Richard Annandale said Wira was aware of the dogs\u2019 history of aggression and he failed in his responsibilities as a dog owner.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn short, it was only a matter of time before the dogs caused serious injury to another human,\u201d Annandale said.<\/p>\n
Annandale also pointed out that Wira had admitted early on in a statement to police he did not trust his male dogs and would keep them in a truck.<\/p>\n
Wira\u2019s lawyer Arthur Fairley said the comments in his statement referred to incidents involving cattle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hear what you\u2019re saying, but it\u2019s more than that,\u201d Justice Andrew Becroft said, disagreeing.<\/p>\n
At trial, Fairley attempted to submit a possibility that Thomson had let the dogs out, but Judge Becroft said he found this theory \u201chighly fanciful\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody in their right mind would release them,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Your behaviour must be denounced\u2019<\/p>\n
Judge Becroft acknowledged Moore\u2019s stance on dog control and said Thomson\u2019s death would have been terrifying and a \u201cdogs will be dogs attitude just will not do\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe community cannot underestimate what can arise when dog owners majorly depart from their responsibilities,\u201d Judge Becroft said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr Wira you fell grossly short of what reasonable New Zealanders would expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour behaviour must be denounced. Your failure was the cause of Mr Thomson\u2019s death.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge Becroft noted there were several aggravating features, including the number of dogs and the fact they had not been fed in two days.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis incident with Mr Thomson was not a one-off. The efforts you took to secure them were wholly inadequate. Imagine if there were children at the property?<\/p>\n
\u201cDogs to this degree of dangerousness should have been tethered.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was also noted Wira had a 10-page criminal record, including a sentence of 12 years for the rape of a teenage hitch-hiker in 2003.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe relevance of all of that is you have apparently lived outside the normal expectations of the law. Your treatment of dogs is one such example of your deliberately adopted lifestyle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wira was sentenced to three years and six months\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a historic first for New Zealand\u2019s justice system, a man has been jailed for manslaughter after his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-86036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86036","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=86036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}