Ranapera Taumata, 30, was tried in the High Court at Napier for the murder of Taylor-Jade Hira. Photo / Ric Stevens
Friends and family of a murdered woman say her killer is a “monster and a coward”, and promise they will fight his release from prison when he comes up for parole - which will be at least a decade away.
Ranapera Taumata, 30, was sentenced on Monday to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 10 and a half years for the murder of his 22-year-old girlfriend Taylor-Jade Hira in Hastings in 2019.
The High Court at Napier was told that Taumata is a long-term methamphetamine addict with an intellectual disability and a psychotic illness, although he was deemed to be sane when he battered Hira and gave her “unsurvivable” head injuries.
But family friend Nichola Tuakanangaro called Taumata a monster and a coward, and “nothing more than a weak little boy”.
As about 20 members of Hira’s family and supporters looked on from the public gallery, Tuakanangaro, reading a victim impact statement, told Taumata: “There are people, some of whom are probably in this courtroom, who think you don’t deserve to be walking this earth.
“However, I don’t agree. I hope that whatever your sentence is, that every day you live in the same fear that Taylor-Jade had on the night that you beat her,” Tuakanangaro said.
“When your first parole hearing occurs, and just when you start to think you might get out, you will see our faces again – fighting to keep you locked up so you can continue living in that same fear.”
Tuakanangaro is the sister of Hira’s best friend Eden Vaerua-Apai, now 26, who gave evidence to the trial about Taylor-Jade’s troubled relationship with Taumata, and who still visits Hira’s grave and keeps it tidy.
During the trial Eden said that in the weeks before Hira’s death she had noticed bruises on Hira’s face ribs, legs and arms. She sent her friend a prescient text message: “What is it going to take? For him to f****** kill you?”
Hira’s mother Maria Rukupo also read her victim impact statement, accompanied by Taylor-Jade’s father, Hauraki Hira, who stood with a large photo portrait of his daughter faced in the direction of Taumata in the dock.
Maria Rukupo also called Taumata a coward who had not reciprocated Taylor-Jade’s “first love”. Instead, he had shown the family “what it’s like to hate”.
The statement revealed that a “paranoid” Taumata had put up video cameras around his mother’s house that captured some of the sustained attack he gave Hira on the night she died, and which provided much of the evidence which convicted him.
Taumata’s trial in June reviewed events at the Taumata family home in the early hours of August 15, 2019, that were captured on the cameras at the front and back of the house, where the couple often shared a sleepout.
The footage showed Taumata at various times grabbing Hira, throwing her to the ground, kicking at her and dragging her by the hair. In later videos she was non-responsive or unconscious.
In addition to murder, Taumata was found guilty and sentenced on a separate charge of assaulting with intent to injure.
That charge related specifically to an incident in the driveway of the Hastings property, where the video cameras caught Taumata kicking his partner on the ground.
Taumata was sentenced to 14 months imprisonment for the assault, to be served concurrently with his life sentence.
But the worst of Hira’s beating happened during 17 minutes after he dragged her by her hair into the sleepout, where the cameras could not see.
Napier Crown Solicitor Steve Manning, assisted by counsel Michael Blaschke, told the trial that Taumata continued assaulting Hira inside the sleepout, causing the head injuries.
Defence counsel Andrew Schulze was assisted by counsel Harry Redwood, who read to the trial a formal statement in which Taumata accepted that he was guilty of manslaughter in that he caused Hira’s death by an unlawful act.
However, a jury of eight women and four men deliberated for two hours to decide that Taumata was guilty of murder, not manslaughter.
In sentencing Taumata, Justice Christine Grice said the fatal assault on Hira had lasted for more than 20 minutes overall.
She said that Hira was highly vulnerable, “controlled by you, scared of you”, and had withdrawn from friends and family.
“She had become effectively conditioned to your violence against her,” the judge said.
The attack was a considerable breach of trust as she was Taumata’s partner, and had happened in a home where she should have been safe.
Justice Grice revealed that Taumata had previous convictions for family violence against another ex-partner, and for non-domestic violence also.
During the eight-day trial, Schulze provided evidence that showed that Taumata had an intellectual disability which placed his IQ in the lowest 1 to 2.5 per cent of the population.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.