A 15-year-old prostitute has been jailed for 11 years for her part in the "pointless" killing of a young man for his car.
Jasmine Dawn Hemana was last month cleared of the murder of Nicholas Odysseus Devliotis but found guilty of his manslaughter.
Mr Devliotis, 32, was beaten, bound and gagged with duct tape over his mouth and partly over his nostrils, and stuffed into the tiny boot of his MR2 sports car at Orewa Beach. He died from suffocation.
At an earlier stage in the legal process, Toni Maree Henare, 25, pleaded guilty to murder. A third person faces a retrial next year.
Hemana, who has been addicted to drugs and worked as a prostitute on the streets since she was 12, was 14 when the killing took place in April.
In the High Court at Auckland yesterday, the Chief Justice, Dame Sian Elias, told Hemana: "I think that the horror of this crime is that it was so pointless.
"There is really no explanation as to why Nicholas Devliotis lost his life and I think it was taken casually and taken callously."
She said Mr Devliotis had been lured to Orewa Beach so that his car would be taken from him.
Henare, who was also a prostitute, claimed that Mr Devliotis had promised it to her in return for sexual favours.
Dame Sian said Hemana was not involved in the initial plotting and would not have gained financially, but she was nevertheless an integral part of the plan.
"You participated willingly and even eagerly," the judge told her.
At the time of the killing Hemana was on bail for another attack with a weapon, which the judge said showed she had an ominous propensity for violence.
Hemana wrote a letter of apology, but the judge said she showed no significant remorse nor any real insight into the enormity of the devastation she had caused.
Crown prosecutor Kieran Raftery said the offending involved particular cruelty to a man who was in a vulnerable state because of his intoxication and because of substance and drug abuse during the day on which he was killed.
"Hemana and her co-offenders, having seriously injured and bound the deceased - but still believing he was alive - put him in the extremely small boot of an MR2, pushing his head up against the internal wall and bending his legs back in an unnatural position before closing the boot," Mr Raftery said.
Defence counsel Geoff Wells said Hemana had agreed to take part in the "revenge" beating of Mr Devliotis because of the disputed ownership of the car, but she did not think he would be seriously hurt.
"It was a situation which got completely out of control from what had been anticipated."
Mr Wells said Hemana had been on the streets since the age of 12 and he wondered whether she had had any childhood at all.
While she stood in the dock alone, others apart from her co-accused were also accountable.
Her role model was Henare, an older prostitute whose street name was "Poison", which Mr Wells said was not far from the mark considering what happened.
Dame Sian said the girl's family could make some reparation to her by being supportive over the coming years. "They owe it to you."
Hemana will serve a minimum of 4 1/2 years.
Teenager gets eleven years for part in killing
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