Mongrel Mob members facing long jail terms
File image. © Andrew Bardwell
After what was described in court as a “squabble between gangs”, much of the Aotearoa chapter of the Mongrel Mob and its associates in Christchurch are in jail facing long prison terms.
A jury convicted six members in the High Court of kidnapping a rival gang member, and five of them on various charges of bashing him in a 16-hour episode in August 2015.
Justice Cameron Mander remanded all six in custody for sentencing on September 29. He asked for pre-sentence reports and a victim impact report. He thanked the jury members for their service in the nine-day trial and told them: “Go back to your normal lives. Forget about the trial.”
The jury was told that three men had admitted charges related to the incident ahead of the trial, and they are also awaiting sentence. It was not told what charges they had admitted.
The police investigation – Operation Vale – and the jury’s findings must have dealt a serious blow to the Mongrel Mob in Christchurch.
Nine members of the gang, or its associates, are now either in custody or awaiting sentence on charges that are going to bring serious jail time.
Matthew Joshua Mulvey, 35, Leon Delshannon Turner, 41, a builder, Peter Damian Gilbert, 46, a concrete worker, August Keefe, 57, Jason Phillip Reweti, 35, a labourer, and Dylan Raymond Shannon Corbin, 27, were all convicted by the jury of kidnapping Dawson Reihana.
Mulvey and Turner were convicted of wounding and injuring him with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
Gilbert was convicted of wounding him and injuring him, but was acquitted on a second charge of injuring.
Keefe was convicted on two charges of injuring.
Reweti was convicted on one charge of injuring and acquitted on a second charge.
Corbyn was acquitted on a charge of injuring.
A seventh man was discharged during the trial.
The trial revealed a low-rent attempt by one chapter of the Mongrel Mob to extort money or drugs from another chapter of the same gang. It pitched the Aotearoa chapter against the Notorious chapter. One lawyer described the incident in court as a “squabble between gangs”.
The trial displayed some unexpected things about the gang’s dynamics, especially after evidence in the trial from the victim – 35-year-old Dawson Reihana – that he was amazed that he was being dealt to so harshly by his gang “brothers”.
It wasn’t really a matter of luring Reihana to an address in Ajax Street, Shirley, where he would be beaten and kidnapped – all they had to do was invite him with a text from someone he knew.
He turned up and was set upon by three men who were waiting for him with claw hammers.
He said he was beaten with the hammers and also knuckledusters after others joined in. He was taped hand and foot, and punched and stomped.
His two cellphones were taken from him and the Mob members used the phones to send messages to all his friends demanding money and drugs for his freedom. He was hurt that no ransom was ever paid, he said in his police interview.
After that DVD interview – recorded as he lay in his hospital bed, bandaged and dosed on morphine – was played to the trial, Reihana admitted in court that he may have “over-exaggerated”.
He eventually escaped when his “guard” fell asleep, and he was able to chew through the tape on his hands and get to a cellphone to call the police. That second kidnap scene, at a Mob address in Bowenvale Avenue, was surrounded by police by the time Reihana made his way out to safety and an immediate trip to hospital.
The defence made much of the fact that his injuries did not appear to match up with his claims. He had plenty of wounds, but the only broken bone was in his nose. They suggested that it may not have quite lived up to his assertion that he had been bashed in the head and knees with claw hammers, and was the victim of an assault and kidnap that went on for 16 hours.
Category: Focus
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