KEY POINTS:
The street gang member who committed the first of a spate of killings across Auckland will not be eligible for parole for 17 years.
Marlan Conroy Tuporo was sentenced in the High Court at Auckland yesterday after earlier being convicted of the murder of Lio Naea in the Otara neighbourhood of Flat Bush in October 2005.
Justice Paul Heath described the murder as "brutal ... with a high degree of callousness", which elevated it beyond the 10-year penalty for the "standard range of murders".
Tuporo, a member of the local PDBs - Penion Dosina Boys - smashed Lio Naea with a pipe wrench and stabbed him with a kitchen knife.
It was retaliation for an attack on the PDBs earlier in the night by the rival JCBs - Juvanyle Crip Boys - that Lio's son George organised and took part in.
Justice Heath said he accepted that Tuporo, 19 at the time, was "upset and angered and deeply disturbed" and believed that two of his fellow PDB members beaten by the JCBs would die when he went after Lio Naea.
However, Justice Heath said there was still "calculated behaviour" involved, and although a short period passed between the attack on his friends and the murder, it was enough "to stew or to reflect".
The JCB attack and Tuporo's retaliatory murder happened within 15 minutes of each other.
The murder was the first of 10 youth or street gang related killings in Auckland in the past two years.
George Naea and the other JCBs convicted for their part will be sentenced later this month.
