Mobster dodges second preventive detention sentence

Mongrel Mob member Warren Te Hei was sentenced in the Napier High Court yesterday to six years and nine months' jail time for attacking an inmate in Hawke's Bay Prison. Photo / File

A Mongrel Mob member has escaped a second preventive detention sentence after bashing a fellow inmate in prison when he was awaiting trial for a machete attack.

Warren Charles Te Hei, 46, appeared before Justice Mark Woolford in the Napier High Court yesterday to be sentenced for an attack in Hawke's Bay Prison that left a man hospitalised and in need of several plates and screws in his head.

He was sentenced to preventive detention in July last year after he attacked a woman with a machete in 2014, and in December it took a jury just 15 minutes to find him guilty of the prison bashing in 2015.

After the verdict was read out it was reported jury members gasped in horror as the Judge told them Te Hei was in jail for the machete attack and had previously served a sentence for attempting to murder a fellow inmate.

Yesterday Crown prosecutor Jo Rielly advocated for a second preventive detention sentence to be imposed on the basis that Te Hei continued to pose a high risk of further offending and was involved with gang warfare.

Te Hei's defence lawyers Chris Tennet and Mireama Houra opposed the application, asking for a finite sentence which was granted.

The court heard the defendant had made attempts to remove himself from gang involvement after becoming involved with the Mongrel Mob when he was just 15.

Three psychiatrist reports gathered for the hearing noted that while he still posed a high risk for further violent offending in gang or prison environments, he posed a low risk in neutral community situations.

Justice Woolford adopted a starting point of six years' imprisonment for the attack and imposed an uplift for the defendant's lengthy criminal history, including convictions for serious violence, and the fact the offending occurred in a prison.

The court heard Te Hei had spent a significant portion of his life in prison and held more than 100 previous convictions, eight of which were for violent offending.

He was sentenced to nine years' jail in 1992 for the aggravated robbery of a Hastings bank and in 1997 he was sentenced to another 10 years for attempted murder after he and his brother Sam Te Hei, who is serving a life sentence for the murder of Colleen Burrows, stabbed an inmate with scissors.

In 2000 he was one of four inmates paid a combined total of $325,000 in compensation for claimed mistreatment in the Hawke's Bay Prison. He was awarded a total of $55,000.

Yesterday Te Hei was sentenced to six years and nine months' jail time with a minimum imprisonment period of three years which was to be served concurrently with the minimum period imposed at last year's sentencing for the machete attack; totalling five years.