A tour of the facilities built at Auckland Prison in Paremoremo in 2017.
Five Mongrel Mob members were already serving prison sentences when they allegedly attacked another inmate.
Four have pleaded guilty, resulting in stacked sentences.
Auckland Judge Nevin Dawson described the attack as a gang-related revenge plot and denounced their conduct.
Four Mongrel Mob-affiliated inmates at New Zealand’s highest security prison have had their sentences extended after another prisoner was stabbed around 40 times in the facility’s exercise yard.
Taneti Karaitiana, whose face is blacked out with tattoo ink except for three large Ms across his forehead, appeared in North Shore District Court via audio-video feed from a prison conference room this week as Judge Nevin Dawson ordered a sentence of four years and two months’ imprisonment.
Co-defendant Sangato Atonio Patua Moataane, whose cheek is adorned with a large gang insignia, flashed a Mongrel Mob sign on his forehead and stuck out his tongue at Karaitiana on the television screen as he was brought into the courtroom dock to face a lesser charge for the same incident.
The judge ordered him to serve a sentence of one year and seven months.
Mongrel Mob member Taneti Karaitiana, shown here around 2016, has had his sentence extended after a violent 2023 attack at Auckland Prison's high-security Paremoremo unit.
Karaitiana, 30, and Moataane, 29, were both ordered to serve the sentences cumulatively with the terms they were already serving at the time of the attack. Moataane was also handed a one-year concurrent sentence for causing over $1200 damage to a courthouse holding cell last April.
“I denounce your conduct,” the judge said to both men. “It was totally unacceptable.”
Stabbed and stomped
Authorities allege five people attacked fellow inmate Tear Euini in two back-to-back assaults inside Auckland Prison’s maximum security Paremoremo unit on the morning of September 20, 2023.
The exercise yard was monitored by CCTV, but it appears prison staff did not intervene in the 30 minutes between the first and second attacks, which Judge Dawson described as part of a gang-related revenge plot.
Karaitiana is alleged to have approached Euini first alongside another inmate who maintains his not guilty plea and is awaiting trial.
Karaitiana admitted he helped punch and kick the victim, aiming for his head, before the other man allegedly pulled a shank from within his pants and started stabbing the victim an estimated 40 times in the head and neck.
“At the same time, Mr Karaitiana has continued to punch and kick Mr Euini multiple times to the head,” court documents state. “Mr Euini began to bleed heavily from the head and neck.”
Authorities accused the three others - Moataane, as well as co-defendants Moses Hurrell and Larren Rapatini - of having “observed and celebrated” during the first attack before joining in on the second one.
Shanks are improvised, homemade stabbing tools common in prisons, often consisting of sharpened plastic or thin metal.
Court documents don’t indicate how the shank used on Euini was constructed, but they do state he was treated with pain relief as the wounds to his neck, back and shoulders were “cleaned and closed”. He also suffered bruising to his forehead.
Mongrel Mob member Taneti Karaitiana, shown here around 2016, has had his sentence extended after a violent 2023 attack at Auckland Prison's high-security Paremoremo unit.
Euini was cleaning his wounds 30 minutes later when Moataane and Rapatini approached and began punching him in the head. When he attempted to flee, all five defendants surrounded him and pinned him to the wall, authorities allege.
He was then pummelled again, with all five men allegedly stomping his head and torso after Rapatini grabbed him by the leg and dragged him to the ground.
“Mr Euini managed to break free and was quickly extracted from the yard by Corrections staff,” court documents state.
Violence resumes
Last week’s sentencing of Karaitiana and Moataane was the third such occasion in recent months.
Hurrell, 24, was handed a cumulative sentence of one year and three months in November, while Rapatini, 27, was handed a one-year-and-one-month consecutive sentence in January.
Most of the co-defendants have previously been in the media for violent offending, most notably Hurrell.
At age 16, he fatally attacked a cancer patient during a Christchurch robbery while he was high on synthetic cannabis. He was sentenced in 2018 to three-and-a-half years’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to manslaughter. Three others would later be found guilty at trial of murdering the same victim, 65-year-old Pierclaudio Raviola.
Pierclaudio Raviola was left for dead in a Sumner carpark, and died in hospital two days later.
In 2022, Hurrell’s sentence was extended by four years and four months for another shank attack in an Auckland Prison dayroom a year earlier in which the victim was left with an 11cm gash across his neck. Hurrell was found to have stabbed the victim in the head and face about nine times, followed by stomps to his head.
Hurrell’s father was head of the Hastings chapter of the Mongrel Mob, a High Court judge was told at the 2022 hearing as his troubled upbringing was discussed.
Karaitiana, meanwhile, was the subject of a manhunt in 2016 in which police warned the then-21-year-old was dangerous and should not be approached. He had two warrants for his arrest at the time for allegations of “serious violence, firearms and sexual offences”, police said.
Defence lawyer Shane Killian pointed out in court this week that his client has no convictions for sexual offending, despite the allegation again surfacing in a pre-sentencing report.
The plea for the public’s help in locating Karaitiana was accompanied by a photo showing extensive Mongrel Mob facial tattooing, but before his face had been completely covered in black ink.
Police released this photo of Taneti Karaitiana during a manhunt in 2016.
Moataane, a patched member of the Mongrel Mob Rogue chapter, was sentenced to prison in 2022 after he held a 14cm knife to the chest of a Hawke’s Bay store employee, threatening to stab her if she didn’t hand over cash and cigarettes quickly during a robbery.
He also has a history of behavioural issues in custody, having punched another inmate and a prison officer at Manawatū Prison while awaiting trial on the robbery charge. He was sentenced in Napier District Court to three years and four months’ imprisonment.
High risk
Judge Dawson didn’t get into specifics during this week’s sentencing for Karaitiana and Moataane, but he noted that both men had extensive criminal histories.
Karaitiana’s rap sheet, he noted, included 15 previous convictions for violence, including five with weapons. Moataane’s included eight prior violence convictions, seven of which included weapons.
He described both men as still harbouring an “extremely misguided” loyalty to gang culture. Both men were assessed as being at a high risk of re-offending and harming others.
Karaitiana faced up to 14 years’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm for the first attack.
Judge Nevin Dawson. Photo / Jason Oxenham
The judge set an eight-year starting point, uplifting it by four months to account for his prior criminal history before deducting 20% for his guilty plea.
Moataane was given a two-year starting point for a lesser charge involving the second attack. It was then increased by three months for his prior offending and one month for the willful damage of a holding cell. The judge allowed discounts of 20% for his guilty plea and 12% for his troubled background and substance abuse issues.
Defence lawyer Katie Russell sought an additional 10% discount for his remorse and willingness to engage in rehabilitation.
“He was very eager to address the victim personally to apologise,” she told the judge, noting that her client has since been moved to a lower security unit - an indication, she said, that he has avoided misconduct for some time.
But Crown prosecutor Rosemary Hayden said Moataane had attempted to minimise his involvement in the attack, telling a pre-sentence report writer it consisted of only one punch.
The judge ultimately declined the rehabilitation and remorse deduction.
“Your actions do not indicate remorse,” the judge said. “There’s no indication from you that you’re prepared to step away from the gang lifestyle.”
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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