The president of the Tribesmen was allegedly shot by a member of his own gang. Photo / File
The president of the Tribesmen was allegedly shot by a member of his own gang. Photo / File
The shooting of a gang boss at a rugby league celebration in Auckland is alleged to be an inside job by a fellow Tribesmen member.
Dion “Buzz” Snell was shot outside the main shopping area in Ōtara shopping in early November, as fans celebrated Samoa’s 20-18 victory over Tonga inthe Rugby League World Cup.
A talented league player himself, Snell was taken to Middlemore Hospital with what police at first described as critical injuries. Just days later, Snell was riding his motorcycle to mark the 40th anniversary of the Ōtara chapter of the Tribesmen at a Kumeu vineyard.
Snell is the president of the motorcycle gang that was involved in a tit-for-tat war with the Killer Beez gang earlier this year. There was a string of drive-by shootings and suspicious fires targeting members of each gang, which were former allies, until a ceasefire was called in June.
There were initial suspicions that the Killer Beez were behind the attack on Snell and the truce would be broken. Those fears proved to be unfounded and on Saturday, more than a month after the shooting, the police arrested a 36-year-old man who was charged with attempted murder.
But the Herald can reveal that the alleged shooter was not a member of a rival gang, but a high-ranking member of the Tribesmen and close associate of Snell.
The alleged shooter has been granted interim name suppression and will reappear in the High Court at Auckland in February.
The reason for the alleged motivation for the attack on Snell remains unclear at such an early stage of the prosecution - and may never be fully known given none of the Tribesmen members are likely to co-operate with police.
The targeting of the Tribesmen’s president came less than six months after the gang was at the centre of high-profile conflict with the Killer Beez.
The gangs were once closely aligned with the Killer Beez, more of a youth street gang in the mid-2000s, acting as a feeder group to the Tribesmen, a more traditional motorcycle club.
The gangs were so intertwined that president of the Killer Beez, Josh Masters, was also a patched Tribesmen member.
He was arrested in 2008 on methamphetamine and money-laundering charges, for which he was later convicted and received a sentence of 10 years and five months in prison.
In Masters’ absence from Ōtara, many of the original Killer Beez graduated to the colours of the Tribesmen and re-established the gang’s dominance in their old stomping ground.
His homecoming was met with resistance from his former friends, and tensions flared with a number of shootings as Masters reasserted the Killer Beez as a fully fledged motorcycle club with distinctive white patches.
Everything came to a head in April 2019, when a senior Tribesmen member shot Masters inside the Harley Davidson dealership in Mt Wellington.
The man who pulled the trigger was Okusitino Tae, one of Masters’ closest friends growing up, and a former Killer Beez soldier.
He handed himself in and was jailed for seven years. Masters got a life sentence - the president of the Killer Beez is paralysed from the waist down from his injuries.
Despite his physical limitations, Masters is clearly in charge of the Killer Beez and was most recently seen riding a quad bike in a convoy as part of the gang’s recent annual conference.
After several years of relative peace, it’s understood tensions flared again in March this year when the Tribesmen held a patching ceremony for new members in Papatoetoe.
Later that evening, Killer Beez fired at the address where the Tribesmen were celebrating.
While no one was hurt, this show of aggression set the scene for what followed.
So when some Killer Beez fell off their motorcycles on the Southern Motorway during the gang’s conference in April, a video clip of the embarrassing crash was shared widely on social media by mocking Tribesmen.
The online humiliation inflamed the rivalry to the point where a senior member of the Killer Beez turned up at a rugby league practice with a firearm to threaten a senior Tribesmen.
The confrontation never took place. But the aggressive move was the catalyst for the five drive-by shootings over one weekend in late May, which spiralled over the next three weeks until the truce was called.
In a show of unity, members of both gathered together to pay their respects to one of the founding fathers of the Tribesmen, “Oldman” Roy Katene, who passed away in October.
Members of the Killer Beez and the Tribesmen gangs in a joint ride for Roy Katene's tangi at Ngati Ōtara Marae, Ōtara. Photo / NZME
