Mob couple sentenced to life for murder: both will serve minimum of 11 years in jail

George Hallet Walker and Mercedies Grace during their High Court trial for the murder of Gisborne woman Maraea Smith, earlier this year. File picture

There have been 115 shootings in the Eastern District in the past three years. Nearly all have been gang-related and have involved illegal firearms.  Thirty people have been wounded and two women killed.

Those chilling statistics were read by a prosecutor at a High Court sentencing yesterday in Gisborne for Mongrel Mob couple George Hallet Walker, 37, and Mercedies Grace, 31, who were previously found guilty of murdering local woman Maraea Smith.

Justice Peter Churchman sentenced each to life imprisonment — Walker with a minimum non-parole period of 11.5 years and Grace with a minimum  non-parole period of 11 years.

Ms Smith, 36, was an innocent bystander when she was shot dead during a gang incident on Titoki Street about 9.55pm on March 25, last year.

After an eight-day trial in May, a jury accepted the Crown’s case that Walker was the gunman who fired two shots from a .303 rifle towards Ms Smith, having mistaken her for one of a group of rival gang members. Grace was a party to the murder by driving him to and from the scene.

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Prosecutor Cameron Stuart said gang and gun violence had become “epidemic” in Gisborne and must be met with a clear response of denunciation.

Gisborne had been “blighted” by such violence “for years”. The streets had become “dangerous battlegrounds for senseless turf wars between the Mongrel Mob and Black Power”.

“This case realises the community’s greatest fear — the killing of an innocent member of the public.

“Maraea Smith, a mother and grandmother immersed in her whānau and culture, fell victim to a senseless and highly dangerous act” in which Walker and Grace still denied being involved.

“This community had had enough and nobody else should lose their life in this way,” Mr Stuart said.

The Crown said the shooting was a retributory act for an incident about 9pm that evening when a carload of Black Power affiliates descended on a family gathering at a Mongrel Mob house in Titoki Street, vandalising a car outside and wounding Grace’s hand with a metal pole when she confronted them.

Angry and determined to exact revenge, Walker drove his distinctive grey ute around the neighbourhood yelling Mongrel Mob slogans, trying to drum up support from gang associates.

When he couldn’t find anyone, he used his ute to ram the Black Power group’s vehicle into a fence outside Ms Smith’s sister’s house.  Upset the car was there, the two women  — who had nothing to do with the incident — made the ill-fated decision to go in search of its Black Power owners to ask them to remove it.

Meanwhile, Walker had headed home to get his firearm, picking up Grace on the way. She drove him back to Titoki Street, keeping the vehicle idling at the intersection with Childers Road, while he got out and fired two shots.

The first shot hit a grass verge so he aimed the second shot higher. It hit Ms Smith in the chest as she and her sister were desperately trying to run home.

Walker and Grace left town the next day. By intercepting phone data, police were ble to track them to Manukau and gather further evidence against them.

Walker’s counsel Shane Cassidy argued for a sentencing start point of 11.5 – 12 years. Counsel Holly Tunstall sought a starting point of 10 years for Grace, saying her role was lesser.

However, Justice Churchman said the pair were equally culpable and adopted the 13-year starting point advanced by the Crown. The judge said he found the evidence against the pair compelling and rejected the defence’s contention at trial that the shots could have been fired by someone other than Walker, elsewhere in the street.

The only mitigating factors for which discounts were available to Walker and Grace were for their personal circumstances and background, the judge said.

Grace had been raised in difficult circumstances, exposed to gang violence throughout her life, including gang shootings. She described alcohol as her demon but had abstained since the shooting and had completed a seven-month residential rehabilitation programme. She got one and half years’ discount.

Walker had a comparatively good and loving upbringing, deciding on his own volition to join the gang when he was about 16.

He had been jailed at age 22 for armed robbery and had convictions for violence including family harm. But those convictions were dated and in the last four years he had got free of a meth addiction, was fully employed, and working towards buying a house. He got a year’s discount.

They each got a further six-months discount in recognition of the hardship their seven-year-old child would suffer having both parents incarcerated long-term.

There couldn’t be any discount for remorse. Walker maintained his innocence.  Grace told a presentence report writer she was “heartbroken” by Ms Smith’s death but remained silent about assisting Walker. She had tried to minimise her involvement by saying she had been too drunk that night to remember anything but her actions had proved otherwise, the judge said.

He noted the report writer’s comment that Grace’s hatred for rival Black Power members, was reflected in the words she used for them.

Justice Churchman said Ms Smith’s death wouldn’t have occurred without the “toxic influence of gang rivalry and the sense of entitlement, casual violence, intimidation, and brutality that is common in so many gang settings”.

He said that while there were no Black Power members standing in the dock alongside Walker and Grace those involved in the incident that night should “bear some moral responsibility for initiating the events that culminated in the loss of an innocent person”.

At the outset of the hearing, Ms Smith’s uncle Paul Martens read a victim impact statement on behalf of the whanau, expressing their pain and loss at the senseless death of the woman they considered their “Queen” and a positive leader not only for their whanau but for Maoridom. Maraea had an extensive knowledge of Maori language and culture and had “helped support and build confident, strong, loyal, trustworthy, life affirming, and caring people,” Mr Martens said.

Maraea’s children described her as “our everything, our light and happiness”. They said she was a “bright, well-known person that everyone knew and loved - a hard-working mother that always tried to help us and any whanau member”.

A year before she was killed, Ms Smith’s husband died, leaving her broken. Her children now wondered why – of all the people in the world – she too had to die.

Their whanau were not violent people but through Maraea’s death “violence had been impaled upon them”, Mr Martens said. The effect of it saddened them. They’d had to watch “young, confident, people break and shatter, loving and caring men and women’s hearts turn cold, spiteful, and hateful”.

Mr Martens spoke of the particular “ache of knowing that when Walker said (that night) he had shot the wrong person, Grace’s response was ‘shut the fuck up’ and ‘who the fuck cares’.

“Well we’re here to tell you that there’s a whole whanau, hapu, iwi, and several communities that care – we care!”