A victim of a notorious Hawke's Bay violent offender hopes to face a Parole Board with a plea for the offender to be kept in jail, or at the least stopped from returning to the Bay.
Former prison officer Hylton Smith says parole applicant Arai Whakaari Hema "ruined my life" and shouldn't be released at all, let alone allowed to live in Hawke's Bay where he committed the offences which have seen him in jail for most of the past 14 years.
Now aged about 34, Hema was first jailed as a 20-year-old in 1999 after a mid-morning Napier home invasion the previous December in which he attacked a teenaged girl and a 78-year-old neighbour who rushed to her aid when he heard her screams.
Unknown previously to police and on the loose for six months before being identified after the incident, Hema was sentenced to 11 years for the attempted murder of pensioner hero Bruce Butler.
Back in court in 2005, Hema was sentenced to a further six years for a Hawke's Bay Prison attack on three prison officers, including Mr Smith who was struck repeatedly with a shovel. As a result Mr Smith received severe injuries which brought an end to his career as an engineer, and as an engineering instructor working at the jail at the time running classes to help the prisoners.
In a High Court sentencing, a judge told Hema he had come within "a hair's breadth" of being sentenced to preventive detention.
In 2009 Hema was sentenced to a further six months for escaping custody by fleeing a work party outside Auckland Prison at Paremoremo.