{"id":93939,"date":"2025-10-22T08:54:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T08:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/93939\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T08:54:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T08:54:08","slug":"armed-robber-rawiri-walkley-fires-shots-at-member-of-public-after-stealing-20k-worth-of-cigarettes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/93939\/","title":{"rendered":"Armed robber Rawiri Walkley fires shots at member of public after stealing $20k worth of cigarettes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walkley, with his son-in-law Solo Turner<\/a> and a 14-year-old, pulled into Grove Place, a cul-de-sac near the Dinsdale Shopping Centre.<\/p>\n

The trio then walked to the Lucky Dairy wearing disguises.<\/a> Walkley was armed with a Glock-style firearm, Turner with a baseball bat and the teen was carrying bags.<\/p>\n

Once inside, Walkley raised the gun and pointed it at the staff.<\/p>\n

He kept it trained on them as Turner jumped the counter and began to fill a bag he was holding with cigarettes.<\/p>\n

The younger person also joined in filling up his bag.<\/p>\n

The store\u2019s fog cannon was activated and the three fled on foot towards their car on Grove Place.<\/p>\n

A member of the public who witnessed the incident chased them and confronted Walkley as he was getting in the car.<\/p>\n

He responded by firing two shots in his direction. No one was struck.<\/p>\n

Some $19,326.09 worth of cigarettes were stolen.<\/p>\n

Walkley initially denied being involved in the robbery but said he knew who was.<\/p>\n

In March, Turner was jailed <\/a>for five years and five months for his part in this armed robbery and four others across Hamilton in five months.<\/p>\n

\u2018The perceived danger was high\u2019<\/p>\n

Crown prosecutor Lexie Glaser initially proposed an eight-year jail term as a starting point, but dropped that to seven years as the gun was deemed to be a BB gun.<\/p>\n

However, she submitted the perceived danger by the victims was still high.<\/p>\n

\"AA Crown prosecutor said Rawiri Walkey (centre) should get a 10% sentence discount for engaging with the ManUp programme. Photo \/ Facebook<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d the judge agreed. \u201cIf you were on the receiving end of it, you wouldn\u2019t know any difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

She accepted that Walkley, like Turner, had engaged with the ManUp programme and said he should get a 10% discount for that work, along with another 5% for his upbringing.<\/p>\n

\u2018He wants to pay these people back\u2019<\/p>\n

His counsel Nadine Baier said the offending wasn\u2019t overly sophisticated but accepted there was a small amount of premeditation, with their adoption of disguises and weapons.<\/p>\n

There was a dairy targeted but the monetary value was not overly high, she said.<\/p>\n

She pushed for a 15% discount for his plea, 15% for his rehabilitative work, which had led to him relocating to another town, and 5% for remorse.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d also offered to pay his share of the reparation.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wants to pay these people back and I\u2019m sure he intends to do that once he is released,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think he will go back on that promise. He is genuinely remorseful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018I ran out of meth\u2019<\/p>\n

Walkley had told a pre-sentence report writer that he\u2019d organised the robbery because he had run out of meth and he knew Turner had committed similar robberies before.<\/p>\n

He was now a member of Destiny Church and had joined the ManUp programme.<\/p>\n

The judge also took into consideration that his 11-year-old daughter<\/a> was killed in a car crash in Kaikohe two months ago and another child was left seriously hurt.<\/p>\n

The fact he was armed with an imitation firearm was still serious and the victims had been left traumatised.<\/p>\n

The shop owner said he was unsure if Walkley was going to harm his wife that day and it had been hard since then to focus on running the business.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the man\u2019s wife said she was still in shock from what happened and no longer liked to work late.<\/p>\n

Judge Clark said Hamilton \u201cseems to have more than its fair share\u201d of armed robberies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are sentencing people every week,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt might have been something that happened quickly, but there have been ongoing impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n

After taking a six-and-a-half-year starting point and applying various discounts, he jailed Walkley for four years and two months.<\/p>\n

Judge Clark also ordered him to pay his share of the reparation, $6442.03.<\/p>\n

Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 10 years and has been a journalist for 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Walkley, with his son-in-law Solo Turner and a 14-year-old, pulled into Grove Place, a cul-de-sac near the Dinsdale…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[46871,69894,74,7814,1975,3944,45410,69895,7224,26663,63,71,26094,6288,42,296,17095,1329,43,1118,3109,69892,19430,50376,4744,1346,40,38,41,39,69893,19985],"class_list":["post-93939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-46871","tag-20k","tag-after","tag-armed","tag-at","tag-car","tag-cigarettes","tag-confronted","tag-dairy","tag-fired","tag-fires","tag-from","tag-getaway","tag-hamilton","tag-headlines","tag-into","tag-jumped","tag-member","tag-news","tag-of","tag-public","tag-rawiri","tag-robber","tag-shots","tag-stealing","tag-stole","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-walkley","tag-worth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93939","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=93939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}