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The estranged son of a government consultant has narrowly avoided jail after a series of petrol drive-offs, an attempted burglary of a service station and fraudulently obtaining $12,000.
Ariki Gannin Ormsby, the son of William Gannin Ormsby, was instead sentenced to six-and-a-half months of home detention at his sister’s house in Ngāruawāhia, despite recommendations from mental health officials not to let him out into the community.
Ariki Ormsby’s counsel, Hayley Carson, told Judge Stephen Clark in the Hamilton District Court that his parents didn’t support him, but his sister and her husband were happy for him to serve a home detention sentence at their home.
Ormsby’s brother-in-law is a licensed firearms holder and despite the judge initially having concerns about him serving his sentence in a home where there was a firearm, Carson said her client didn’t have a history of firearms offending and no guns were involved in his current offending.
Police also did checks to ensure the guns were held in an “impenetrable safe”, she said.
The court heard that between December 2021 and July last year, Ormsby lived with a 66-year-old woman and during that time would help her with her banking using her cellphone.
After the 29-year-old moved out, he returned on several occasions and used the woman’s phone to withdraw $8000 and then two further transactions of $2000 each.
Ariki Ormsby appeared in Hamilton District Court. Photo / File
From September through to early October last year, he drove off from seven petrol stations around Hamilton, Rotorua, Tauranga, Tokoroa and Bombay without paying for more than $300 worth of petrol, and stole $13.92 worth of food from a Rotorua New World.
Then, on the night of October 2, he and some associates drove to Caltex Dinsdale in Hamilton.
Realising the sliding doors were shut, they left, only to return a short time later.
Armed with a circular exercise weight, Ormsby smashed it nine times into the sliding door in an unsuccessful attempt to get inside, as his associate kicked the door.
They left once the alarm went off.
In deciding his sentence, Judge Clark said the issue troubling him was whether to send Orsmby to prison or on home detention.
Carson said his pre-sentence report did “leave the door open” for home detention and that he’d lost his bed at Te Whatu Ora’s Henry Bennett Rongomau Centre, the mental health unit at Waikato Hospital, due to his behaviour.
She said Spring Hill Prison wouldn’t offer the nurturing environment required, and while Orsmby didn’t have the support of his parents, his sister remained supportive.
“The environment with his whānau is better than a prison environment. It’s going to be up to Mr Ormsby if he complies with his community treatment order. That’s a matter for him.”
Although he wasn’t working, he was keen to pay some amount of reparation to his main victim, she said.
Ormsby had been diagnosed with a mental health disorder but was able to be treated in the community.
Judge Clark explained how Ormsby was brought up in England until he was 7 years old before moving to New Zealand where he had a “good childhood”.
His parents separated when he was “really young” and as a teenager, he developed a cannabis and synthetic cannabis habit.
That led to him developing mental health difficulties which had seen him hospitalised at times.
Ormsby had been living on the streets as a result of a “family relationship breakdown” and was sleeping in his car with a machete when police arrested him on October 10 last year.
He had to be transferred out of the Henry Bennett Centre due to displaying “entitled and antagonistic behaviour at times”.
Judge Clark accepted Ormsby had no history of firearm offending and it was mostly dishonesty-related.
He handed down the home detention sentence “on balance”.
Ariki Ormsby, the estranged stepson of Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta and son of her husband William Gannin Ormsby (both pictured), was homeless at the time of his offending. Photo / NZME
Ormsby’s father, Gannin Orsmby, is married to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nanaia Mahuta, who is not Ariki’s mother.
Mahuta came under scrutiny last year after it was revealed her husband’s company Ka Awatea Services was awarded consultancy contracts with Kāinga Ora, the Ministry for the Environment, the Department of Conservation and Te Pūni Kōkiri.
Mahuta told Public Services Commissioner Peter Hughes at the time she had been assiduous in declaring conflicts of interest in relation to the contracts.
A spokesperson for Mahuta’s office said there would be no comment on behalf of her and her husband in regard to Ariki Ormsby.
