Court Photo: RNZ / Diego Opatowski
The victims of a Queenstown home invasion were warned the Mongrel Mob would kill them if they told the police.
About 4am on 11 November, Braden Thomas David Knight (23) and Brook William Wilson (27) entered a Thompson St house, shared by four flatmates, through an unlocked door.
Entering the bedroom of two of the victims, a couple asleep in bed, one switched on the light and said "time to wake up mother f.....".
They attacked the male, punching him numerous times to the head and body.
When the girlfriend's screams prompted the first victim's brother to come to their help, Wilson pushed him through a glass door.
The fighting then stopped, but the defendants refused to leave, and Wilson became enraged when the female victim called the police.
He told the flatmates "if you value your life, I have ties to the [Mongrel] Mob".
"They will come here and kill you."
The threat prompted the female to end the call, and the defendants left before police arrived.
Some days after the home invasion, Knight called one of the victims, apologising and offering a box of beer if he dropped the police complaint.
The first victim suffered concussion and bruising to his head, an eye and hand, the other male suffered scratches on his back, and the female sustained a facial injury from being elbowed in the face.
A fourth flatmate who was in the house at the time was uninjured.
Knight later told police he went to the house to speak to one of the flatmates about an incident 10 months earlier in which he had been "talking s... about him".
The defendants appeared by audiovisual link for sentencing in the Queenstown District Court yesterday on charges of injuring with intent to injure, male assaults female and being unlawfully in a building.
Knight was also sentenced for supplying class B drug MDMA, between 14 October and 17 November, in the resort town.
Wilson's counsel, Michael Walker, said the defendant would soon be a father, and home detention would give him the "best shot" at fulfilling that role.
Wilson's father, a "reasonably infamous" criminal and former rugby player, had recently been imprisoned, which indicated the difficulties the defendant had faced in his upbringing, Walker said.
Earlier this month, former New Zealand Colts, Southland Stags and North Harbour player Pita Wilson was sentenced to two years and three months' prison for possessing methamphetamine for supply and resisting arrest.
Judge Jim Large told the defendant he hoped the "sins of the father won't come to rest on your shoulders", but he had a choice about the example he set to his own child.
"If you continue to behave as you have, they will sit where you are."
He sentenced him to nine months' prison, after deducting eight months for time already served, converting that to five months' home detention at a Masterton address.
Taking account of Knight's early guilty plea, youth and previous clean record, he came to a sentence of 16 months' prison, which he converted to eight months' home detention at a Blenheim address.
Both defendants must pay $500 reparation to each of the three victims, and emotional harm reparation totalling $1277 to two of the victims.
* This story originally appeared in the Otago Daily Times.