Mongrel Mob member Bradley Harper-Brown helped carry out a violent attack on a rival gang. Photo / NZME
Bradley Harper-Brown had just been patched with the Mongrel Mob when he helped plan and carry out a violent act of retribution against a rival gang.
Harper-Brown, then 19, and an associate were robbed by members of the Crips in January last year in a drug deal gone wrong.
Beaten and upset, Harper-Brown and his co-offender met fellow mobsters Teimana Tawhai and Justin McGoldrick that evening and collected a pump-action shotgun.
High on methamphetamine and under the influence of alcohol, the group arrived at the rival’s Lower Hutt home where he was hosting a party and knocked on the door.
After an altercation at the front door, a partygoer walked from the back of the house to see what was going on.
McGoldrick fired three rounds down the hallway, striking the man. He suffered 20 shotgun pellet wounds to the left side of his torso.
The three men fled and were soon spotted by police after several calls from the public.
Police tried to stop the vehicle but the group sped off, weaving through traffic and turning off the car’s lights.
They came to a stop after the vehicle’s wheels were spiked, and a search of the car turned up a shotgun.
Today, Harper-Brown, now 21, was jailed for four years and four months on charges of aggravated wounding and aggravated burglary.
“At the moment you are choosing a life of crime, violence and misery, including your own misery. Only you can change that,” Justice Francis Cooke told him at the High Court in Wellington today.
Defence lawyer Chris Nicholls said Harper-Brown’s background was filled with cultural, social, health and educational disadvantages and the gang was the only future he could see.
It was “almost inevitable” he had sought that lifestyle.
But he had plans to move away from the Wellington region and its Mongrel Mob entrenchment once he was released from prison, said Nicholls, who accepted jail was the only outcome.
“It’s always a sad day as a defence lawyer when you have to stand up in court for a young first-time offender when there’s no other option than prison.”
Crown prosecutor Grant Burston acknowledged Harper-Browns’ difficult upbringing but also highlighted the serious violence involved in the case, and that he had absconded from his electronically monitored bail.
While Burston said jail for a young, first-time offender was not an ideal outcome, Harper-Brown struggled to cut his gang ties.
“He’s unable to disengage from the entrenchments he has to the gang.”
Justice Cooke acknowledged the deprivation Harper-Brown had faced in his life and that he had turned to the gang for protection and security.
But there was no indication he had cut ties with the mob, he said.
Tawhai and McGoldrick were sentenced earlier this year for their part in the attack and were jailed for five years and two months, and six years, respectively.
Hazel Osborne is an Open Justice reporter for NZME and is based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington. She joined the Open Justice team at the beginning of 2022, previously working in Whakatāne as a court and crime reporter in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.
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He fired a shot which flew past the son's head and through the TV.