There are fresh calls to ban gang patches after a failure to bring to justice two senior Mongrel Mob members who ordered gang prospects to dig up the body of a friend. Photo / File
There are fresh calls to ban gang patches after a failure to bring to justice two senior Mongrel Mob members who ordered gang prospects to dig up the body of a friend. Photo / File
A decision not to charge two senior Mongrel Mob members who ordered gang prospects to dig up the body of a friend and return it to the gang has prompted fresh calls to ban gang patches.
Police have now confirmed to the Rotorua Daily Post they have not brought charges against two senior Mongrel Mob members behind a "disrespectful" plan to dig up the body of Jason Lines from a Rotorua urupa.
Six men and two youths were charged with interfering with human remains and six have now been sentenced in the Rotorua District Court. Charges were dropped against the two youths.
Pictured (from left) is Shannon Apirana, Sebastien Wineera and Ryan Lingman in the Rotorua District Court. Photo / File
The men convicted were Ryan Lingman, 25, Shannon Apirana, 28, Sebastien Wineera, 22, and Rhys James Phillips, 25. Tiger Ross, 18, and Maurice Ututaonga, 21, completed police diversion, meaning they weren't convicted despite pleading guilty.
The offending relates to December 2 last year - the day Lines was buried.
The men, who are members of the Eastside Gang in Rotorua, had been drinking with Mongrel Mob members when senior gang members instructed them to go to the urupa and exhume the body and bring it back to them.
The court heard the gang planned to perform their own "form of sending off" for Lines.
Lines, 24, from Rotorua, was an associate of the men and had died when his fishing dinghy capsized crossing the Bowentown Bar, south of Waihi Beach, on November 20.
A summary of facts released to the Rotorua Daily Post said two senior patched members told the men to go to the urupa and exhume the coffin and bring it back to them.
They were told they had a choice, but refusing to do as instructed might result in them being assaulted.
The men took turns at digging. Apirana refused to dig because he was worried about the tikanga (Maori customs) implications and at one point told the others to stop digging, but they didn't listen to him, the summary said.
About 9.30pm, police arrived at the urupa. By this stage the group had dug about 1m down. The young men panicked and fled in a truck which was chased at high-speed by police and eventually stopped at the roundabout of Old Taupo and Hemo Gorge Rds.
Earlier this year the Rotorua Daily Post asked police why the two senior members weren't charged but was told police couldn't comment because the matter for the younger men was still before the court.
Rotorua police area commander Inspector Anaru Pewhairangi. Photo / File
Rotorua police area commander Inspector Anaru Pewhairangi has now confirmed those gang members won't be charged.
"We are aware that senior Mongrel Mob members were alleged to have been involved in the attempted exhumation of Jason Lines. However, there is insufficient evidence to charge them in this instance.
"We'd like to reassure the public that we take the activities of any organised crime group seriously and we are committed to holding offenders to account."
Rotorua's Rendall Jack, says gangs were not taken seriously enough by police and the public.
Rotorua man Rendall Jack, who has this year been outspoken about gangs after his son was murdered by gang members five years ago but never charged, said gangs were not taken seriously enough by police and the public.
Jack's son, Israel Jack, died in a random and brutal killing on Te Ngae Rd on August 18, 2013. Police confirmed for the first time this year gang members or associates were "probably" the killers.
Despite new information being given to police this year, no one has ever been charged.
Jack said the Lines case was, in his view, a "stereotypical example of how gang members played the legal system".
"If the orders and threats by patched gang members on their puppets who want to be just like them don't make them culpable then obviously the patch is their protective power. Ban and seize gang patches so members become the first target of police and so the prospects are fully liable for their criminal and disrespectful actions."
Defence lawyer Jonathan Temm, who represented Ross, said he couldn't comment on whether the gang members should have been held accountable.
However, he said those who were charged and put their hand up straight away were dealt with more leniently than those who took the longer road through the court process and thankfully for all those involved, including the Lines family, the men were stopped from completing their plan before the situation got worse.
