By TONY WALL
Hopes of rehabilitating two schoolyard thugs who beat a teacher senseless are in tatters after they graduated instead to murder and manslaughter.
Brothers Henare and Kasey Wikaira of Northland were given a chance to redeem themselves by a Youth Court judge who sentenced them to supervision after they attacked their school deputy principal with a spade in 1997.
They returned the favour by beating a man to death in a shocking attack at Omapere during New Year celebrations this year.
In the High Court at Whangarei this week, Henare Wikaira, aged 20, and a friend, Sydney Bristow, 18, were found guilty of murdering Auckland holidaymaker David Taylor and were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Kasey Wikaira, 18, was found guilty of manslaughter.
Mr Taylor's partner, Bronwyn Whitaker, told the Weekend Herald the brothers were savages.
But their father, Henry, stands by them and says they are good at heart.
He said their goal was to get out of jail and return to his home at isolated Whirinaki.
"I just think of it as them going on a long holiday."
On January 1, the Wikaira brothers and Bristow beat, kicked and punched Mr Taylor before smashing him with a beer bottle and dropping a large rock on his head.
The 29-year-old died in Auckland Hospital four days later.
Mr Taylor had chased Kasey Wikaira down the beach after he had caused a disturbance at his campsite and had abused Ms Whitaker.
He gave up the chase and was hit from behind by Henare Wikaira.
The brothers' tendency to use extreme violence first flared when Opononi Area School deputy principal Allister Gilbert asked one of them to remove a beanie hat.
The horticulture teacher was carrying a spade which the brothers used on him. They kicked and punched Mr Gilbert, knocking him out.
They were expelled and as part of their sentence shifted from Whirinaki to Rotorua with their father.
Mr Wikaira said yesterday: "It [the killing] is just one of those things that happens, that's all."
While in Rotorua, Henare Wikaira got a job in horticulture and talented guitarist Kasey Wikaira did a musician's course and played several gigs, he said.
During family New Year celebrations at Omapere his sons drank a "skinful" of alcohol and smoked cannabis.
"But they were being hassled all night ... [The victims] were looking for it anyway, it wasn't one-sided."
Asked if he reprimanded his sons when they attacked the teacher, he replied: "Not really because he's got a track record of being beaten up at school - it's not the first time it's happened to him.
"And I was a bit disappointed with the school because it was just over a beanie and now they've allowed beanies ... It's really ridiculous."
The brothers are not the first in the Wikaira extended family to take a life - their cousin Sydney shot a man dead at Whirinaki in 1996.
Brothers lost chance to change life
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