May 25, 2008

Edgeware Road and the culture of violence

Opinion: Reviewing the Edgeware Road murder trial,?? By David Clarkson

The city?s culture of street violence took a big hit at the weekend.

All of the things that are wrong with this attitude of confrontation, alienation, and aggression came together along Edgeware Road on May 5 last year.

A jury decided that it was anger and a willingness to hurt ? and not caring about whether anyone was killed ? that made Lipine Sila take off and accelerate through the crowd of partygoers.

If there was a message underlying Saturday afternoon?s guilty verdicts in the five-week murder trial, it was surely that the city has had enough.

At age 23, Sila is looking at a long time in prison. He hit 28 people that night, seriously injured eight of them and killed two schoolgirls, Jane Young and Hannah Rossiter.

At his sentencing in the High Court on June 26, the crown will certainly be seeking a long non-parole period for the former representative boxer who is now a convicted double-murderer.

The court spent weeks ticking off everything that went wrong that Saturday night, May 5, 2007.

Firstly, there was the party itself, for which the invitation was sent out widely by cellphone text, and drew more than 800 at the height of the disorder. It said: ?Party at 95 Edgeware Rd. Saturday night. No gangsters. No fighting. Bring your own. It will be huge.?

Secondly, there were the street gangs who thrive in this atmosphere of threat and intimidation.

The court heard that skinheads had beaten up someone at the party an hour before the fighting broke out along Edgeware Road.

One witness wanted to round up his friends and leave the party because of the alarming and frightening atmosphere that developed. In his assessment a large number of skinheads and boyracers had turned up.

Someone else told how gang rivalries flared among the crowd. He knew people in the crowd as members of the Cripps or another gang known as the Bloods or Slobs.

Thirdly, into that volatile mix, stepped Lipine Sila and his brother Ben, and their two mates.

Lipine had been told by his family to look after Ben, but that was a bigger task than he could manage, given Ben?s frame of mind.

Witnesses saw Ben in the middle of road challenging anyone to fight, drunk and throwing bottles. One smashed the rear windscreen of a parked car, which was then moved quietly out of harm?s way.

When someone did accept the challenge, and fighting broke out, Ben ran away and says he hid in a property around the corner. He has accepted the blame for his part in what happened.

Lipine Sila was involved in the fighting, punched and hit with a bottle which did not break. That was the fourth thing that went wrong: a man with a temper was put in a situation where he wanted to lash out.

It all made him angry enough ? the jury decided ? to get in the Honda Integra and put his foot to the floor through the densest group of partygoers in the roadway.

The jury clearly took a lot of time to consider his situation: injured and bleeding, a menacing crowd in the street, bottles being thrown, not very good at speaking to people in English, and no friends in sight.

When the jury had to decide whether he was angry or frightened, it opted for angry.

Seven seconds of carnage and a year of grief has followed.

In the weeks after the Edgeware Road party tragedy, the Christchurch District Court dealt with a similar case where a vehicle had been driven onto a footpath and struck partygoers.

The only difference was that they were not so badly hurt and no-one was killed.

The police know, and householders in the worst affected areas know, that this kind of mayhem is not uncommon.

The police have voiced their plan to tackle crime at a low level to head off the bigger incidents.

The hope is that the approach may cut the disorder, the aggression in the streets.

Those who spend time at the Court House know that the problems are regular, and dangerous.

Edgeware Road was the worst example, but it would be a trap to think of it as some kind of freak event.

The violence is going on out there far too often.

But Edgeware Road was so bad that the city had to take more notice than it usually does.

The question is whether any notice was taken by the factions who are out there on our streets after dark, causing damage and injury, raising the fear factor, and generally using disrespect as a way of life.