Drug house shooting: ‘I wish he had done a better job’ says wounded victim

A photograph of Hendrix Jury released by police after the shooting in Christchurch. Photo / New Zealand Police

A Christchurch drug dealer who was shot in the legs by Mongrel Mob member Hendrix Jury sometimes wishes he had done “a better job”, and killed him.

Part of the man’s victim impact statement was read to the Napier District Court on Wednesday by Judge Russell Collins, shortly before he sentenced Jury to a long prison term.

The shooting victim did not know the heavily tattooed mobster before he turned up at his “sinnie house”, where customers could buy synthetic drugs, in the Christchurch suburb of Linwood on August 30 last year.

Jury got out of a Toyota vehicle carrying a firearm and walked down the side of the house to the window where drugs were sold at the rear of the property.

He knocked at the window as if to initiate a deal, then raised his weapon and shot the dealer as he walked towards him.

A bullet passed right through the man’s upper right thigh and into his left thigh.

Jury left in the car and the victim managed to get to a small park nearby, where emergency services were called.

Hendrix Jury fled Christchurch on a commercial flight to Napier after the shooting. This photograph was later released by New Zealand First politician Winston Peters.

In his victim impact statement, the man said he still had daily pain from his injuries, nerve damage and flashbacks.

He could not walk long distances and fragments of the bullet were still lodged in his thigh. He suffered from depression and a fear of going out.

“I have thoughts wishing that he made a better job of injuring me, and I did not survive the injury,” the statement said.

The motive for the shooting remains unclear.

According to Crown counsel Cameron Stuart, quoting from a cultural report, Jury described as the shooting as a “spur of the moment, stupid, dumb thing”.

After the shooting, Jury went on the run. Police described the 27-year-old as “extremely dangerous” and released a photo showing his full-face tattoo adorned with swastikas, the words “Sieg Heil” and the placename Wairoa.

It was towards Wairoa that Jury was headed. He boarded an Air New Zealand flight from Christchurch to Napier.

After being told by aircrew to remove his patched gang jacket, he sat shirtless on the flight, showing the Mongrel Mob insignia tattooed across his back.

Police said he had not been identified as a suspect in the shooting at the time he caught the flight.

A month after the shooting, Jury was arrested in Hawke’s Bay.

He was charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm for the shooting - an offence which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years.

Jury was later charged with assault with intent to injure and injuring with intent, for two brutal assaults inside Christchurch Men’s Prison six months before the shooting.

The victim of both assaults and a number of men who attacked him, including Jury, were all members of the Mongrel Mob.

In the first assault, the victim was overpowered and backed up against a wall. He was kicked and punched repeatedly over his head and body for about 40 seconds before officers could reach them.

In the second assault, the victim challenged one of his earlier attackers to a fight, leading to a three-on-one brawl.

The victim was followed around the exercise yard as three men, including Jury, threw punches and eventually backed him into a corner.

He was punched and kicked for about a minute, falling to the ground.

Jury and the two other men took turns at kicking the victim in the ribs and head.

The victim was taken to hospital suffering bleeding from his head and mouth and facial injuries.

In court on Wednesday, Judge Collins sentenced Jury to nine and a half years for shooting and wounding the drug dealer, and shorter, concurrent sentences for injuring the prison inmate.

But the judge accepted what he said was a “powerful” argument from defence counsel Nicola Graham against imposing a minimum non-parole period.

Graham had argued that not enough rehabilitation programmes were being run in prison, and places on them went to people who were getting nearer to going before the parole board.

She said people could “literally sit in prison for years” without access to a programme.

This would apply to Jury if a non-parole period was set.

Judge Collins noted that Jury had been born into the Mongrel Mob. He had no choice in the matter and it was not “something that came along in your teenage years”.

Graham said that Jury had been exposed to violence and raised with violence, which had been “normalised” through his upbringing.

“But for his upbringing, but for his background... this (offending) simply wouldn’t happen,” Graham said.