Christchurch gang member Dukie Montgomery went to wrong house to collect drug debt

High Court Justice Jonathan Eaton said the original sentence was in error.

Late one night, three gang members armed themselves with shotguns, adjusted their hoodies to hide their faces, and advanced down a driveway to knock on a door to collect a drug debt.

But, they were going to the wrong house.

It was 11.45pm. A woman answered the door.

The three men asked her if they could see Reece. She said she didn’t know anyone called Reece. They said that they didn’t believe her.

She told the men to leave, but they didn’t.

A man then came to the door.

He told the three men that his family had lived at the Christchurch house for 10 years and there was no-one there called Reece.

It was only then that Dukie Montgomery and his two associates realised their mistake and disappeared back into the night.

The house occupants later reviewed their CCTV footage, discovering that two of the men - one of them Montgomery - had been armed with shotguns when they came calling at their door.

Montgomery had concealed his weapon while talking to the occupants.

Montgomery’s visit to the wrong house happened on March 9 this year. He told police later that he was doing what he had been told.

At the time, he was on bail for another burglary, which he committed on October 16 last year, when he was also “acting on instructions from his gang” to collect drug debts, according to court documents.

Around 9.35am that day, he jumped a fence, ripped the cables from a CCTV unit, disabling it, and entered a garage where a man and a woman were sleeping.

He had known the woman for about six years but claimed later he was targeting the man.

He woke the couple by yelling at the woman and punching her partner multiple times in the head.

The woman fled from the garage with Montgomery chasing her into the property’s yard. He ran from the scene when she yelled out to her daughter to call the police.

As he left, he shouted at her that she owed him $13,000.

Montgomery was arrested on March 22 and was sent to prison for four years and 10 months on charges of aggravated burglary, burglary, possession of a firearm, and failing to co-operate with a search, by refusing to give his phone PIN to police.

In the District Court, Judge Tony Couch said the burglary at the garage was “effectively a violent home invasion” against victims who were vulnerable because they were asleep.

In regard to the visit to the wrong house, the judge said the burglary was aggravated because the house was targeted and multiple offenders took firearms and concealed their identities.

The judge took into account that Montgomery had surrendered his double-barrelled shotgun to police.

Montgomery appealed his sentence to the High Court, where his counsel said that he had been given insufficient credit for remorse, his background, and for totality - when a judge adjusts a sentence to make it appropriate for overall criminality when dealing with two or more crimes.

In a recently released decision, High Court Justice Jonathan Eaton said the original sentence was in error because of the calculations of credit given, and the approach to a Section 27 report outlining Montgomery’s background.

That report had been prepared for a different judge when Montgomery was sentenced on three charges of assault with intent to injure in February 2023.

It described a background where drugs and family violence were common, introducing Montgomery to drugs, alcohol and dishonesty at an early age. His education was limited.

Montgomery was first sent to prison at the age of 20 and had been in and out of custody since, becoming institutionalised and ill-equipped to deal with everyday life in the community.

He was also motivated to do things out of a sense of obligation to his gang.

Justice Eaton said Section 27 reports were not relied on to “excuse offending”.

“Their purpose is to help explain offending with reference to an offender’s background and the way in which that background may have related to that offending,” he said.

He reduced Montgomery’s jail term from four years and 10 months to four years and three months.

Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME's Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke's Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.