Dylan Hemana sentenced as ringleader in kidnapping of Nelson family and torture of one

Dylan Hemana has been sentenced in the High Court in Nelson to eight years in prison. Photo / Tracy Neal

A man who used pliers to almost twist the toes off his victim before breaking his leg and jaw with a hammer says his actions were seated in his Once Were Warriors upbringing.

Dylan Glen Hemana was the ringleader in what a judge described in the High Court at Nelson today as an “extremely disturbing, unusual level of violence” involving torture while detaining a family to extract information on behalf of a gang.

Justice Karen Grau said it was “callous violence” in front of the victim’s mother, who was forced to witness it. The judge sentenced the 33-year-old to eight years in jail for kidnapping, wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, possession of methamphetamine for supply and offering a bribe.

Crown prosecutor Jackson Webber said it was “calculated torture” and a “very intimidating piece of violence” meted out for a specific purpose.

Defence lawyer Jack Seton said that, while Hemana chose to do what he did, his actions were seated in “what came before”.

He said comparing Hemana’s life to the film Once Were Warriors might seem overly emotive but it didn’t make it less true, adding that Hemana’s father was akin to “Jake the Muss”.

Crown prosecutor Jackson Webber said it was a “very intimidating piece of violence” meted out for a specific purpose. Photo / Tracy Neal

Hemana was raised amid normalised family violence that included public beatings and being shifted from home to home to avoid social services.

Ultimately, it led him to the gangs, Seton said.

Missing meth

Hemana, who is associated with the Head Hunters in Auckland, was the principal offender among five people trying to find out what had happened to about $200,000 of missing methamphetamine.

The chain of events leading up to the brutal torture was seeded in discord between a drug supplier and a dealer.

In September 2022, Hemana and an associate visited a Nelson man, who would become the primary victim, and left him a “significant quantity” of methamphetamine to look after.

It was initially kept in a bag in the boot of a car at the victim’s Nelson address.

A few days later, the victim was told to bury the bag. He did as instructed and discovered the bag contained pottles and containers of meth, which he later dug up and, with an associate, took to a suburban Nelson motel.

Police say it appeared the associate then took a large amount of the drug and left town.

On September 18, Hemana and Repana Tangira, who was among four people sentenced recently in the High Court in Nelson on charges linked to the events, flew to Nelson under false names to recover the missing meth.

They ransacked the victim’s house. After the victim was encouraged to return from the motel where he had been hiding, they detained him, his mother and teenage brother.

Tangira and Hemana told the victim that, if they didn’t get what they wanted, they would “do what needed to be done to his family”.

Hemana gave the victim 24 hours to return the methamphetamine.

Over the next two days, Hemana, Tangira and other defendants took the victim on drives to various locations around Nelson, while his mother and brother remained detained.

It was then that the three others sentenced recently – Tessa Alford, Zane Welsh and Hopa Wilson – joined in and helped to detain the victim and his mother.

Early in the morning of September 20, the victim was told to drive Tangira and Alford to Blenheim, believing they were headed for the ferry terminal in Picton.

Fearing for his safety and that of his family, the victim did as he was told. Hemana remained at the house with the victim’s mother and teenage brother.

The victim drove to Blenheim, parked outside a house for several hours and then drove the pair to nearby Rarangi Beach where, after several hours, all fell asleep.

Rarangi Beach in Marlborough, where the victim and those watching over him fell asleep and were woken by a police officer patrolling the area. Photo / Tracy Neal

They were woken by a police officer who was patrolling the area.

Hemana then told them to drive back to Nelson.

Pain so bad victim wanted ‘to spew’

Back at the victim’s home, he was told to wait in the garage, where he found his younger brother. Several of the defendants took turns guarding the pair while Hemana and Tangira went upstairs to where the victim’s mother was.

Hemana told her he had “come for what she had taken from them”.

When she denied taking anything, Hemana got angry and told her he was going to make her watch him hurt her children.

Hemana continued to goad the victim, who by this stage had come upstairs to find his mother crying. She was told Hemana would “kill her son and make his way through the rest of the family” unless she told him everything, the court heard.

Hemana grew increasingly angry when the victim challenged him.

He picked up a pair of pliers, applied them to the victim’s big toe and squeezed until the victim began to sweat and became dizzy with the pain.

Hemana then repeated the torture on the victim’s other toe, which he twisted with the pliers. The victim felt a sharp, shooting pain and was afraid his toes would “pop off”.

When the victim told Hemana the drugs had been taken after a gun had been held to his head, Hemana became enraged, picked up a hammer and struck the victim in the left knee.

As the victim screamed in pain, he was struck with the hammer in the other knee, then in the face and leg.

The force broke his leg and jaw. His face and leg were also cut.

The victim believed he fell unconscious from the pain, which he described as so bad he “wanted to spew”.

Hemana then told him to clean the blood from the tools but he fell as he tried to walk on his broken leg. Sweaty and dizzy, he managed to drag himself to the kitchen and clean the tools.

Just after midnight on September 21, the victim’s younger brother managed to hide in a wardrobe and call the police.

They arrived to find the victim “very pale” and lying on the couch with visible injuries to his leg and face.

As the police checked the house, Hemana left but returned a short time later, hiding in the back seat of a car, pretending to be drunk, and sent another person in to check what was going on.

He was arrested after giving the police a false name and then told the officer he was a gang prospect and offered $10,000 to the officer to let him go.

The victim was taken to Nelson Hospital, where he had surgery on his face and leg.

Webber said Hemana’s indications of remorse outlined in pre-sentence reports were “difficult to get past” when his attitude had seemed to be: “You get what you get when you live in this world”.

Justice Grau said features of the offending that contributed to its seriousness were the injuries inflicted on the primary victim, the use of weapons, the extreme level of violence used to extract information and the level of pre-meditation.

She acknowledged Hemana’s substance abuse was a coping mechanism from the trauma associated with the family violence he had experienced from a young age.

But he had at times also functioned well in the community, having relapsed during Covid lockdowns.

He was given discounts for his guilty pleas and steps taken towards rehabilitation while in custody, but Justice Grau was not satisfied Hemana’s remorse was genuine.

He was jailed for eight years with a minimum non-parole period of four years. His fines of $6730 were remitted on the basis that he had no realistic prospect of paying them.

Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.