The defendant, now 20 and with continuing interim name suppression, appeared before Judge Kathryn Maxwell in Auckland District Court this morning as she mused over his unusually substantive criminal history for someone so young.
He has spent some of his time since the March 5, 2022, shooting remanded in a maximum security jail cell, where he has at times spent 23 hours per day in lockdown.
“You have to take some responsibility, though, of course, for that difficulty on remand,” the judge said, blaming the difficult conditions on “how you are acting in prison”.
The defendant was ordered to serve a sentence of five years and seven months for three counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm with a firearm and a concurrent six-month sentence for receiving $1700 worth of stolen goods as the result of an unrelated road rage incident.
He was 18 when arrested last year for the shooting, which took place around 2am on a Saturday on central Auckland’s Fort St, where some businesses catering to the nightclub scene remained open.
Court documents state the teen “was with several associates and became involved in an altercation” on Fort St with another group that included Andersen. The teen then left for a nearby parking garage and returned with what appeared to be a homemade “pipe shotgun” loaded with pellets from a 12-gauge shotgun shell.
“The victim Andersen walked towards the defendant before the defendant points the firearm towards the victim and discharges it,” according to the summary of facts for the case.
“The victim Andersen is shot with multiple pellets hitting him across the body.”
Two bystanders who are sisters were also sprayed with the shotgun pellets, with one of the siblings suffering wounds to her face and upper body.
The man later told police he didn’t know what the firearm was “and that he just dinged it and it went boom”, court documents state.
Andersen, who has been vocal about the shooting and his long road to recovery, said previously that he had been standing outside his favourite kebab shop when he and two women were targeted at random.
The 34-year-old father spent a week in hospital, where 22 lead pellets were surgically removed from his face, arms and torso and another 20 pellets were left in place because they were too difficult to remove.
“They had to cut pellets out of my arteries, intestines, and stomach,” Andersen told the Herald last year, two months after the shooting. “A pellet missed my eye and there is one lodged near my heart. I am full of lead and I get tired easily.”
Poull Andersen recovering in hospital. Photo / Supplied
Recalling the event on social media last year, Andersen said he thought about his two young sons not having a father after the shots rang out and he began to realise what had happened.
“Haunted by the memory of falling to the ground in the middle of Queen St with blood coming out of me everywhere, every breath followed by a choking cough full of blood and hot sweats,” he wrote. “All I was thinking about was my two boys, whether I would see them again.”
He told the Herald the shooting has caused him physical and mental pain. He also fell behind on the rent for his sports car modification business, JDM Garage, as he focused on his recovery.
“I’m not the bubbly, fun person anymore,” he said. “I have slowly withdrawn from the world, I think.
The teenager allegedly brandished a homemade firearm on Fort St just before 2am on March 5, 2022. Photo / Hayden Woodward
“I stay well clear of the city; I don’t ever want to get myself in a situation like this again. My boys who live in Christchurch don’t want to visit; they are too scared. I love my kids to bits; I want to be there for them and no one is going to take that from me.”
Feeney agreed that the shooting has been hard on her brother, and said it has rattled her as well.
“The level of violence is disgusting and terrifying,” she previously told the Herald. “My brother doesn’t want to go back to his favourite kebab shop ever again. I am scared for my boyfriend who works in the city — it’s not like ‘this happens to someone else’ because it happened to us.
“My brother is traumatised, we have to be careful around him. I don’t think anyone could get over something like this.”
At today’s hearing, Judge Maxwell said the matter was aggravated because of the pre-meditation in leaving the scene to retrieve a gun and the extreme violence of an “unprovoked and gratuitous” attack that included the injury of two bystanders.
“Your selfish actions have seriously affected a number of people,” she said.
Jay-Jay Feeney and Poull Andersen. Feeney previously said the 'level of violence is disgusting and terrifying'. Photo / Supplied
She assessed a starting point of nine years for the shooting and the receiving charges but then deducted 20 per cent for his guilty pleas and a 5 per cent discount for his youth. Defence lawyer Kate Leys had sought a 15 per cent discount for youth. The judge noted his age might have contributed to his “violent and impulsive manner” that night, but she described the issue of a youth discount as “a difficult one” because he’s been “no stranger” to the justice system.
“For such a young man you have serious previous convictions,” she said. “Your history tempers any discount for youth.”
He also received a 5 per cent discount for remorse, having written letters of apology to each victim, and a 10 per cent discount for his traumatic childhood.
As she wished the defendant well at the end of the hearing, the judge also noted he had a daughter born in June and expressed hope that may inspire him to take a new course in life.
“You can choose that kind of dysfunction if you want to [or] try something different,” she said of returning to gangs when he eventually gets out of prison. “I guess ultimately this is a choice for you.”
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.
