Keresoma was one of eight people arrested in 2019 at the end of a three-month police investigation dubbed Operation Beacon.
The court heard he regularly supplied the drugs for at least six months and was found with 615 grams of meth at the time of his arrest, although the exact amount of meth he cooked remains unknown.
The father-of-three grew up in a Tongan-Samoan family who gave him “every advantage,” Judge McNaughton said. “Your parents did everything right. This is not the extreme disadvantage and family dysfunction you often see [in similar cases],” he said.
The eldest son in his devout Catholic family, Keresoma was a musically gifted youth group leader who played in the church band, according to a court-ordered pre-sentence report.
He was halfway through teachers’ college when his then-partner became pregnant and he was stripped of his leadership responsibilities in front of the entire church congregation, an incident that brought shame to his family.
Keresoma left college to work full-time, and things came crashing down when he lost his first child.
In a letter to the court, his parents said the loss was a “significant turning point that [he] never recovered from”, and he started to lose faith and turned to alcohol.
Keresoma was quoted in the report saying he had “huge regrets” for drawing his sister in and failing to provide for his family.
His partner of 10 years and their three children stood by him when he was in jail but he broke his promises to them, he said.
Keresoma has a previous conviction for manufacturing and supplying meth, for which he was jailed for six years and four months in 2014.
Today, Judge McNaughton sentenced him to five years and three months’ jail for the meth charges, and two years each for the explosives and stolen vehicles charges, to be served concurrently.
He was given discounts for his guilty plea, personal mitigating factors, and what the judge called “excellent” rehabilitation efforts, including attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings and acceptance into the addiction treatment programme Higher Ground.
His current employer had urged the court not to send him to prison, saying Keresoma was on his way to becoming a foreman and the construction sector, “desperate” for skilled workers, could not “afford to lose” him.
But the judge said the scale of the offending meant jail was the only appropriate sentence.
“I really hope you can follow through on what you’ve started and don’t get discouraged by the prison sentence,” Judge McNaughton told Keresoma.
