Relief for mum as son's killers jailed

A Moerewa woman says she is glad her son's killers have been locked up for a long time.
James Tautari, who was raised near Moerewa, and his wife Dency moved across the Tasman with their four children in 2002.
On Boxing Day in 2007 he was attacked in a Sydney street by five young men, then aged 17 to 20.
They were armed with a golf club, a metal pole and a wooden axe handle, with which they beat him on his head and body.
Police said he had been struck on the head with the golf club with such force it broke.
Mr Tautari's injuries included three large lacerations on his head, three fractured ribs, a ruptured spleen and internal bleeding. 
He received emergency surgery, but died in hospital the next day.
Now the five young men in a "vigilante gang" who fatally bashed Mr  Tautari have all been jailed.
Mr Tautari's mother, Janie Henare, said she first travelled to Australia for the sentencing of her son's killers in April this year, but one of their lawyers "hadn't done their homework," so the sentencing was postponed until last Friday.
"I thought 'why is this carrying on and on and on, three years after my son died'. The family of my sons' killers were saying 'look at those Maoris' - it was horrible and I decided I didn't want to go back'."
Ms Henare said her daughter-in-law, Mr Tautari's wife, Dency Tautari, told the court her son, who was  seven when his father died, had been having nightmares.
"She said the saddest thing was bringing him [Mr Tautari] back to New Zealand and his mother couldn't even see him as we couldn't open the casket, his injuries were so bad."
In January 2008, after three weeks with an Australian coroner, Mr Tautari's body was flown back to New Zealand, and was prepared by a funeral home in Auckland. The funeral was held at Otiria Marae at Moerewa, before Mr Tautari was taken to his family homestead at Ngapipito, near Kaikohe.
Family members carried him inside the house, which his grandparents had left to him, and sat with him for  about 15 minutes, before he was taken to Wairere Cemetery at Waiomio. Ms Henare said the family had already purchased a stone for Mr Tautari's unveiling but didn't want to have it until the sentencing was over. It is planned for Boxing Day this year.
In the New South Wales Supreme Court last year, two of the five assailants, David Wildsmith and Luke Tatchell, were found guilty of Mr Tautari's murder.
The other three, who were juveniles at the time of the offence and  cannot be named, were found guilty of manslaughter.
The court was told the attack was retribution for Mr Tautari's alleged physical abuse of the aunt of one of the young men.
Sentencing them in the court last week, Justice David Kirby said the offenders may, through immaturity, have imagined they were avenging some wrong, but they had set aside the rule of law and acted as a vigilante gang.
"It was a cowardly attack on a defenceless man in which they used surprise, weapons and their numbers to inflict serious and ultimately fatal injuries."
Wildsmith, now 23 and the eldest of the group, was sentenced to at least 12 years' jail.
Tatchell, now 20,  was sentenced to at least 13 years and six months' jail.
The others received shorter prison terms, with three years the minimum sentence imposed.
 
Outside court, Mr Tautari's eldest son, Lance Tautari, said the family was happy with the
 sentences.
"We just hope we can get on with out lives now," he said.
Dency Tautari said: "We've lost a loved one, but so have those those parents whose boys are now inside [jail]. But they can still visit - they can still speak to them."
 
 Ms Henare said she last saw her son in October 2007, just a few months before he died, and recalled he was looking forward to returning home.
"He was due to come home at Christmas.
"He loved the country and he loved his home."
Mr Tautari was the second Moerewa man to die violently in Sydney within three months.
In September 2007 Shane Hau, 42, was killed in an alleged hit and run and there was a transtasman row when Australian authorities delayed the release of his body intact for burial.
His family were told Mr Hau's brain had been removed for tests and could not be immediately returned along with the rest of his body.