Poutawa Kireka (inset left), and Shane Thompson, were main players in the scheme smuggling drugs into Hawke's Bay Regional Prison. Photos / NZME
A woman who was a drugs mule for a co-ordinated ring supplying prisoners with methamphetamine and cannabis has been told the operation could not have worked without her.
Freedom Walker played only a small part in the jailhouse drugs ring organised from behind the wire by prominent Mongrel Mob member Poutawa “Puk” Kireka.
But it was a crucial role – she brought meth, cannabis and cigarettes into the jail when she visited her boyfriend, Eli Manihera.
Walker and Manihera both appeared in the Napier District Court for sentencing on charges related to the smuggling of drugs and contraband into the Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison near Hastings.
Walker was charged with making an unauthorised delivery to a prison, supplying methampetamine and supplying cannabis. Manihera was charged with similar offences.
Judge Bridget Mackintosh sentenced Walker to nine months of home detention after she admitted smuggling 6.45g of cannabis, 3g of methamphetamine and 14 cigarettes into the jail.
She sentenced Manihera to an extra 14 months of jail time on top of a sentence of three years and 11 months he is currently serving for a serious wounding and other charges.
Manihera and Kireka were two of three main players in the operation run from the prison in early 2023.
The other was Shane Thompson, also known as Shane Tamihana.
Both Thompson and Kireka had contraband cellphones, which are banned inside the prison.
Thompson used his phone to source drugs from his contacts outside the wire.
These were given to Walker to smuggle in when she visited Manihera, who then passed them on to Kireka.
Judge Mackintosh described Kireka as the “main man” of the operation.
Kireka used his phone, which he kept wrapped in surgical gloves and tied to a jandal in his cell toilet, to co-ordinate the drug ring players outside the wire and organise payments.
Over the course of a month, when police were monitoring its communications, the phone was used to make 450 calls and send 3000 texts. That doesn’t include the messages sent through social media apps.
In court on Friday, Judge Mackintosh told both Walker and Manihera that the use of drugs in jail put the prisoners and staff at risk, and undermined the management of the prison.
She told Walker that she knew what she was doing as part of the supply chain.
“The scheme would not have functioned without you,” she said.
She told Manihera that it “gives me no pleasure” to add more time to the term he was already serving.
A number of people charged with offences related to the prison ring have been making their way through the court system.
Kireka’s prison drug dealing was dealt with at the same time as his sentencing to 10 years and 10 months in prison for serious violence charges.
He seriously injured a 76-year-old good Samaritan who tried to rescue a woman from an early-morning violent assault and kidnapping in 2022.
Thompson had 13 months added to a term of 13 years he is serving for methamphetamine dealing.
At the time of his sentencing for that crime, in 2018, he was described as the top man in a network that had pushed $4.2 million worth of meth into the Hawke’s Bay region over 11 months in 2016 and 2017.
Another member of the prison scheme, who the court was told had acted under coercion, was discharged without conviction early in June. A final suppression order was made on that person’s name.
The courts are still dealing with two other alleged members. Their names are also suppressed.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.
The 19-year-old disappeared without her wallet or mobile phone.