But he was prone to angry outbursts when intoxicated, so routinely so, that his friends and family had come to expect it and learned to largely ignore that behaviour.
He was well regarded by his employer, a trust that often tasked him with speaking to visitors and school groups when they came to hear about the organisation's kiwi tracking programme.
As that night wore on, Turipa-Wano began getting aggressive towards other partygoers.
Matters escalated when he started to target his abuse at another male in particular.
Turipa-Wano threw bottles at a wall and shoved a table across the kitchen floor. He grabbed a bread knife and threatened the other man with it.
Another man managed to take it off him but suffered a deep cut to his arm in the process.
Turipa-Wano was told to leave. He went next door to the house where he lived with his parents. His mother was at shift work. His father was woken by the racket next door and had gone outside.
Turipa-Wano locked him out, securing the back door of the house with bread and butter knives.
His father and a cousin tried to persuade him to let them in, to no avail.
Through the windows they could see him behaving in self-destructive ways.
His father asked a neighbour to call police, who would take more than 40 minutes to reach the isolated rural settlement.
Turipa-Wano's mother arrived home from work and was also unable to assist. She and her husband kept watch and waited for police from a neighbour's house.
Before police arrived, Turipa-Wano armed himself with another knife and a large metal wrench and returned to the party next door.
The jury was told Turipa-Wano abused people still at the house, calling them backstabbers and gossipers.
He smashed holes in walls with the wrench and yelled "which one of you wants to die? Don't think I won't do it".
Mr Mita told him to stop, that he was frightening people, that they knew he was putting on an act and called him a pussy. He tried to get the wrench off Turipa-Wano, who responded by stabbing him twice in the upper chest.
Mr Mita and others began punching and restraining Turipa-Wano, while someone took the knife and threw it into scrub. Turipa-Wano went back home.
Mr Mita became weak and lay down on the floor.
When police arrived, they were immediately directed to Turipa-Wano's house. They could see he had his father's gun, which he had smashed out of a cupboard. He was desperately rummaging around the rest of the house in search of its bolt.
When Turipa-Wano noticed one of the officers outside, he pointed the gun directly at him. The officers hid and Turipa-Wano went outside. Challenged with a taser, Turipa-Wano dropped the gun, took off his shirt and put his hands behind his back waiting to be cuffed.
At that stage, police were not aware of what had happened earlier in the house next door.
Someone called for help for Mr Mita who was by now in a serious state. An ambulance arrived but he could not be saved.
Turipa-Wano asked police if he had killed his mother, as he could not see her.
He was told he had stabbed Mr Mita.
Turipa-Wano said he couldn't believe it and that he deserved to die for killing his best friend.
Opening the Crown case, prosecutor Clayton Walker said there was no dispute that Turipa-Wano fatally stabbed his mate that night.
An autopsy showed Mr Mita died of two stabs wounds that each punctured his lung, with one severing an artery.
The main issue for jurors was whether Turipa-Wano was criminally responsible. Had he committed a crime and, if so, which crime - murder or manslaughter?
The Crown position was that despite his intoxication and despite the fact he would not have done what he did were he sober, and now intensely regretted it, Turipa-Wano knew what he was doing at the time and intentionally stabbed Mr Mita.
He knew that in stabbing his friend, he could potentially kill him.
Being intoxicated did not give an offender a defence, Mr Walker said. Neither did the fact the offender might regret his actions or not remember what he did.
A drunken intent was still an intent. Drunken knowledge was still knowledge.
If a person were so affected by alcohol and drugs that he did not intend or did not know or was not aware what he was doing, then he would not be responsible, Mr Walker said.
That was the defence positive.
In an opening statement for Turipa-Wano, Russell Fairbrother QC (assisted by his barrister daughter Gretel Fairbrother) said the defence in this trial was difficult to express because it was being done so in the context of someone clearly out of control that night.
You could not prove something did not happen and it was impossible for the defendant to prove that he did not intend to commit murder that night, Mr Fairbrother said.
But it was possible for the defence to point out the factors that showed his thinking was so impaired by alcohol and drugs that his awareness of what he was doing was such that it could only remain a state of uncertainty.
Turipa-Wano was extremely remorseful when he learned he had stabbed his best friend Mr Mita, who was someone who had always been a steadying influence on him at times when he was unstable, as he was that night.
Turipa-Wano wrote a note that night that was discovered by investigators the next day and was part of the evidence at trial.
It contained an important clue - that he had been raped as a young boy. That experience was continuing to affect his moods, and made him prone to disorientation and irrational behaviour. His consumption of alcohol and drugs was a form of self-medication.
This was a very difficult trial for lots of people, no more so than the family of the deceased. It was a tragic trial for the witnesses because many of them were the defendant's family.
Until this happened, they had huge expectations of him and held him in high regard.
Turipa-Wano was absolutely remorseful (he wept and hung his head throughout his first day in the dock).
He had been honest and co-operative throughout the police inquiry. He did not take issue with the accusations against him. He knew something went wrong in his mental processes that resulted in this tragedy.
Mr Mita's death was a huge loss but two wrongs did not make a right, Mr Fairbrother said. Jurors needed to guard against the potential to seek revenge for Mr Mita's family.
Justice Karen Clark is presiding.
- Gisborne Herald
