Victim's father calls for Maori justice

HAUNTED: Ray Bushell is bitter about the length of the jail sentence handed down to the man who killed his son.

A bitter Ray Bushell says the jail sentence handed down to the man who killed his son flies in the face of reality.

"I feel terrible," Mr Bushell, Maketu's guardian of the Kaituna Wildlife Reserve, said after yesterday's High Court sentencing in Tauranga in which Tyrone Daniel Flavell was jailed for five years and eight months for the manslaughter of Isaac Bushell.

His son, a 46-year-old father of five, was hit by a shotgun blast in the chest at close range following a confrontation with Flavell on December 8 last year.

Flavell, 20, never denied shooting Mr Bushell near a Maketu beachside car park but argued he did not have murderous intent. At his murder trial last month a jury returned a manslaughter verdict.

Speaking to the Bay of Plenty Times Weekend after the sentencing, Mr Bushell, 79, said he was angry with the sentence handed down by Justice Susan Thomas.

A fairer sentence would have been 10 years. "He should have got more."

After years of seeing victims' families not getting satisfaction from court judgments, he suggested it was time the Maori system was used. Maori should be judged by Maori, or there should at least be more Maori High Court judges.

He said the Maori concept of law was a lot fairer than Pakeha law. "It might be harder at times, but someone has to pay an appropriate sentence ... It is settled in a sort of amicable way and that is the end of it." For instance, Maori justice could have seen land held by Flavell's family given to the deceased's family.

Yesterday's sentencing before a packed public gallery featured emotional victim impact statements delivered by family of the deceased. There were frequent references to Mr Bushell's generosity. He never turned people away and gave food he had hunted and fished to whanau, friends and others.

Flavell sat impassively through the sentencing, facing the six people who delivered victim statements.

Mr Bushell told Flavell: "I am overwhelmed with grief by what you have done." He said the shock of what Flavell did kept coming back to him whenever he stopped his work trapping predators in the wetlands.

Mr Bushell was awarded a Queen's Service Medal in 2012 for his services to wetland conservation and a lifetime of work protecting the environment.

He said it was callous how Flavell had driven off after the shooting, leaving his son alone for more than an hour without emergency help. His son's death had replayed continuously in his mind and sent him into a downward spiral of anger and disgust in which he felt he had lost control of his life, affecting his relationship with friends. He imagined his son lying on the ground as "the vital spark that kept him going slowly dwindled away ... my son must have gurgled as he breathed his last breath".

Justice Thomas' starting point for the prison term was seven-and-a-half years. She reduced that to five years and eight months after taking account of Flavell being a first offender, his age of 19 when he fired the shot, his offer to plead guilty to manslaughter a week before the trial began, and his remorse.

She did not accept a claim by Crown Prosecutor Greg Hollister-Jones that the shooting was a vigilante action. However, she said it was difficult to conceive of a more dangerous action than to point a firearm at someone at close range and pull the trigger. "He knew what damage a shotgun could do."

Defence lawyer Cate Andersen said it was a case of excessive self-defence by Flavell. "Everything caught up with him that night - the drinking, the death threats and the fear." Death threats had come from his girlfriend's former partner, a gang member.