Jett Lawrence and a co-offender used a car they had taken to reverse into the Four Square store at Clive in February 2024. Photo / Paul Taylor
Jett Lawrence and a co-offender used a car they had taken to reverse into the Four Square store at Clive in February 2024. Photo / Paul Taylor
Two men who took a car from an innocent stranger on Hawke’s Bay’s Te Mata Peak used it for a ram raid that they botched, coming away empty-handed and one of them with broken teeth.
It was the second recent case before the courts in which people have beenapproached and assaulted, and their vehicles taken, in the Te Mata Peak park, where people go to walk and enjoy the views.
In the ram raid case, a man was sitting in his car at the peak’s summit early on the morning of February 2, 2024, reading from a Kindle device and looking out over the views of Hastings.
Two men, Jett Lawrence, then 19, and a co-offender, pulled up in a vehicle behind him so that he could not leave.
Lawrence approached the man with a tyre iron, took his cell phone and keys, and dragged him out of the vehicle by his hoodie.
Lawrence and his co-offender then drove both vehicles down the peak and to Clive, about 17km away, where they used the victim’s car to ram-raid a Four Square store, which was closed at the time.
Store roller door smashed
The store front was wrecked when Lawrence twice reversed the car into the roller door.
But the second time, he injured his co-offender, who was caught between the vehicle and the metal door, causing an injury that broke two of his front teeth.
Once they had got into the store, the hapless pair tried to open the cigarette cabinet with a tyre iron and a hammer.
Jett Lawrence was one of two men who attacked an innocent stranger who was in his car, reading and looking at the view on Te Mata Peak. Photo / Warren Buckland
They were unsuccessful.
The would-be robbers left the store empty-handed.
The victim’s uninsured car, which they abandoned in Hastings, was badly damaged and written off because he could not afford to repair it.
Some months later, in October 2024, Lawrence tried to sell a motorcycle on Facebook but the buyer recognised the bike as one stolen from a friend.
The would-be buyer and the legitimate owner turned up and took the bike back, but Lawrence jumped on to their flat-bed ute as they were taking it away and was driven down the street.
Lawrence smashed the back window of the ute cabin with a metal ramp, then kicked one of the men multiple times in the back of the head.
When the ute stopped at an intersection, he punched the man several times before a member of the public intervened.
Lawrence was sentenced in the NapierDistrict Court to two years and seven months in prison on charges of burglary, converting a vehicle, demanding with menaces, theft, intentional damage assault with intent to injure and driving while suspended.
Appeal to High Court dismissed
He appealed his jail sentence to the High Court but Justice Melanie Harland turned him down.
She noted the sentencing judge had said Lawrence could have faced a charge of aggravated robbery, which carried a higher sentence than demanding with menaces and car conversion.
Justice Harland also contrasted Lawrence’s offending with his “loving, caring and responsible” family background.
“It is difficult to understand how this young man, with the family support that he has, has chosen a path in direct conflict with his whānau values,” Justice Harland said.
Lawrence’s co-offender has been dealt with separately by the courts.
They thought they were going to die when a drug-using gang member they didn’t know, Haylen Toi Tahau, 35, took over the driver’s seat of their vehicle.
With them both still in the vehicle, he drove at speed towards trees and power poles and deliberately swerved into oncoming traffic, laughing and taunting his victims, before dropping them at the side of the road to Clive.
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 frontline experience as a probation officer.
