Neilson had pleaded guilty to six Crown-scheduled charges — possession of a firearm and ammunition, presenting a firearm, two counts of intimidation and cultivating cannabis.
A co-accused in the firearms incident, Erana Raukura Smith, is due for sentence next week on similar charges, and for drug dealing.
Neilson and Smith twice threatened a Ruatoria man on January 24 last year.
He was outside his College Road (Ruatoria) home at about lunchtime when Neilson and Smith arrived in a vehicle.
Believing they were after him in relation to a relative’s drug debt, the man grabbed a baseball bat and yelled, “Did you take my brother’s truck off him?”
Challenged to a fight by the man, Neilson got out of the vehicle and yelled, “you think you’re tough with your bat do you? You’re f***ed now, I’ll show you gangster.”
He pulled out a shotgun cartridge, showed it to the man and said, “this is for you”. Neilson and Smith then left.
A couple of hours later, the victim was towing his wife’s car on College Road.
His wife, adult son and three teenage children were with him when Neilson and Smith returned.
Smith did a U-turn, and blocked the victim in.
Fearing what might ensure, he quickly removed the tow rope from his wife’s vehicle — which he’d just managed to start — enabling her and some of their children to get away.
The victim’s daughter could see Neilson had a firearm and yelled to her father to watch out.
It was a single-barrelled, pump action shotgun. Neilson was holding it cross-grip style, while walking towards the victim. The man took cover behind his vehicle but Neilson kept pointing the firearm at him.
Smith yelled at the victim’s son to get out of the way. The son yelled at Neilson to put the weapon down, but he kept pointing it at the victim yelling, “f*** you c**, get hard c***!”.
Neilson and Smith got back in their vehicle and sped off after people at neighbouring properties, who had heard the commotion, came outside.
Armed police searched Neilson’s property on February 1 last year. In his vehicle, they found a loaded shotgun resembling the one pointed at the victim. It had four live red cartridges in the magazine, was actioned, ready to be fired.
Also in the vehicle, was a loaded air rifle, cocked and ready to be fired. Both were within arm’s reach of Neilson.
A well-cultivated yet unsophisticated cannabis plantation, 70 metres x 110 metres, was discovered.
In it were 895 healthy and well-tended plants, ranging in height from 30 centimtres to a metre.
A police drug expert conservatively estimated the mature crop as potentially worth several hundred thousand dollars, albeit it would have been wiped out by the storm.
When police questioned Neilson, he admitted the firearms were his and said they were to protect his crop.
He said the victim’s allegations against him were things the man had done himself.
Neilson denied being Smith’s “muscle man” for standovers in her drug deals. He said he had been busy doing “back-breaking” work “dawn to dusk” for two months to ready his cannabis plot for planting.
He was upset $8000 of his own money that he had put into the venture had gone to waste.
In sentencing submissions, counsel Leighvi Maynard said Neilson had already served the equivalent of more than two years imprisonment while on remand in custody.
He hoped the court might reach an end sentence within range for conversion to home detention.
Prosecutor Michael Blaschke said the Crown would not oppose it.
Mr Maynard said there were significant mitigating factors the court could take into account.
Neilson was genuinely trying to change his life, had attended residential drug rehabilitation and was trying to disassociate from his gang.
He had already had two treatments to remove his facial tattoos. Neilson was someone of promise — once even considered a potential candidate for the Olympic Games boxing team. However, like many young Māori men on the East Coast, he had had a difficult upbringing that negatively influenced the course of his life.
Judge Cathcart accepted the submissions but said despite all those factors it would be difficult to reach an end sentence within range for an electronically-monitored one.
He noted Neilson would only need to serve about another eight weeks in jail before being released.
Neilson’s sentencing also covered an unrelated police charge for breaching a protection order, which he admitted.
It related to an incident last May, in which Neilson sent someone to the Dunedin home of the protected woman’s parents, asking to see her.
Neilson had also tried to visit his daughter at her school in Dunedin but alert to that possibility, the girl’s mother had kept her home.
