“You did not give an explanation as to why you had them,” Judge Phillips noted today, noting that the explosives - often used for mining blasts - can be extremely volatile if stored in unsafe conditions.
His lawyer said the $5000 purchase was a “very stupid” but “spur of the moment” decision and he had no specific plans for them. His partner has since expressed to him the danger he put himself and their neighbours in and he now realised the error of his ways.
Had Fualema not already been serving a prison sentence, he would have received a one-year standalone sentence, the judge noted.
Fualema had unsuccessfully sought home detention during his sentencing in May for the August 2022 attack near Auckland’s Britomart train station.
Reading from the agreed summary of facts, the judge said it was a four-on-one attack at about 1.30am in which the first victim was punched in the head, knocked to the ground and then suffered repeated kicks to his head and his body. The man’s partner was also hit in the head and pushed into scaffolding, the judge noted.
“Absolutely no explanation was put forward by you as to why you chose to attack this man in this way,” Judge McDonald said, noting that Fualema would later tell a probation officer he was so drunk that morning he didn’t remember what he had done.
“The protection of the public is a paramount consideration [for] unprovoked street assault,” he said, noting that Fualema has been assessed as a high risk of re-offending and of causing future harm to others.
Fualema, who had moved to Australia as a child, was once considered a promising rugby league player there before his offences overseas led to his expulsion from the country. He was sentenced in the Brisbane District Court in December 2020 to four years’ prison for a series of attacks on 10 different strangers over the course of one night that had occurred six months earlier.
A prosecutor at the time described the offending as “gratuitous, unprovoked violence, committed against members of the community in public places”, according to the Brisbane Courier Mail.
He had been drinking with friends and family that night when he decided to chase down and start throwing punches at a teenage international student who had just dodged a bottle while walking past Fualema’s home around 10pm, authorities alleged.
He and others then got into a fight with three other men before he forced his way into nearby student accommodation and punched the 45-year-old building manager so hard the man suffered memory loss, the newspaper reported. During a taxi ride that same night, the group refused to pay and Fualema punched the driver with enough force that he needed surgery for cartilage displacement in his throat, the court was told.
About 4am, the next target was a man who was knocked out cold after venturing outside his home to investigate a noise.
“Fualema and the others then ran inside to where the man’s partner and 7-year-old daughter had barricaded themselves inside their rooms,” the Courier Mail reported from the sentencing hearing. “The group ransacked the house breaking their television, overturning furniture and stealing an iPad and other items.”
A couple living next door were also attacked after they heard the mother and daughter screaming and went to help.
Fualema previously played for Brisbane-area rugby league clubs the Easts Tigers and Bulimba Valleys Bulldogs.
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.
