Tumanako-Taiapa had been arrested earlier that week after interfering with a vehicle on January 1 and being found with a knife he had taken into Sugar nightclub.
He had just been at a court appearance for those offences when he stole the car from Lowe Street.
He was also on a previously-imposed sentence of intensive supervision and had been banned from driving due to accumulated demerit points.
The car’s owner was watching from a nearby shop, having left the baby comfortably asleep in the backseat and the engine running to power the air conditioning.
Tumanako-Taiapa didn't notice the baby when he got in but as he sped along Gladstone Road, the little boy began to cry.
Panicking, Tumanako-Taiapa sped through a red light at the Peel Street intersection, turning left on the wrong side of the road, putting the baby, himself, and the public at risk, police said.
He stopped momentarily to pick up a youth he knew, then kept driving to the 100 kilometre an hour zone of Centennial Marine Drive.
The youth helped him get the baby and the car seat out of the vehicle.
As they fled, Tumako-Taiapa overtook several vehicles at high speed on Awapuni Road then aimed and accelerated straight at an oncoming police patrol car.
The youth intervened, pulling the steering wheel hard left to avoid a deadly collision.
Tumanako-Taiapa kept driving to McDonald Road, Matawhero, where he turned into a driveway and was arrested by the same police officers he'd just endangered.
He said, “I wanted to go to my family in Rotorua so I stole that car, but it had a baby in it so I just put it out on the side of the road and then drove off”.
Yesterday's sentencing was part of a Young Adult list in Gisborne District Court.
It covered six charges for the January 1 and January 5 offending to which Tumanako-Taiapa had pleaded guilty — unlawfully interfering with a vehicle and possession of an offensive weapon, theft of a vehicle, reckless driving, driving while suspended, and abandoning a child.
Setting a starting point of 14 months imprisonment for the lead abandonment charge, Judge Haamiora Raumati uplifted it to 17 months for the other offences, then applied various discounts to reach an end prison term of 11 months.
It was the equivalent of time served for Tumanako-Taiapa who had spent five-and-a-half months on remand in custody.
A delay in getting to sentencing was due to a hold-up with the Restorative Justice process, the judge said.
But he was pleased that process was finally completed because it provided a valuable opportunity for the baby's whānau — particularly the boy's mother — to engage face to face with Tumanako-Taiapa so he could apologise and hear how his offending had affected them.
By the end of the conference the family made it clear they wanted nothing but good things for Tumanako-Taiapa and for him to make the most of his life ahead.
Judge Raumati commended Tumanako-Taiapa for progress he had already made in that respect while living away from Gisborne with his whāngai mother.
The sentence discounts Tumanako-Taiapa received were two-and-a-half months for guilty pleas (about 15 percent of a possible 25 percent), two-and-a-half months for youth and time spent on electronically-monitored bail, two months for prospects of rehabilitation and recent attendance at a marae-based programme, and one month for remorse, albeit Judge Raumati said he felt that had sometimes been “a little conditional” at least until the Restorative Justice meeting.
Release conditions forbid Tumanako-Taiapa from possessing and using alcohol and other drugs not prescribed to him, and require him to attend assessments, counselling and programmes where necessary for various issues such as alcohol and drug abuse, and parenting skills.
A six-month disqualification was imposed for driving charges.
The youth involved in the incident was referred to youth services.
