Hindering police investigation lands Whangārei mum in trouble

Brezzin Doyle has been sentenced to home detention for hindering police investigating a shooting just north of Whangārei. Photo / Michael Cunningham

The High Court has rejected a Northland mother's request to be sentenced to community detention after she admitted hindering a police homicide investigation.

Instead, Brezzin Anne Doyle will serve four months and two weeks' home detention after she entered a guilty plea to one charge of being an accessory after the fact to manslaughter.

Doyle appeared for sentencing in the High Court at Whangārei last week. The charge was laid as a result of an incident in October 2016 when Far North Tribesmen member John "John Boy" Harris was shot and killed by Nicky Dodd on Mower Rd, Hikurangi, after confrontation between rival gangs.

Dodd was sentenced to four years and four months in jail by the High Court in Whangārei last December after a jury found him guilty of manslaughter.

Doyle's involvement came a short time after the shooting.

She was instructed by some people and her then partner to go to an address on Rose Pl, Kamo, and to move a motor vehicle that had been left there.

Doyle drove to where the car was with her two children, tried to move the vehicle but it became stuck on a kerb before neighbours helped her free it.

She then drove it a short distance before parking it down a driveway in a position where it could not be seen from the road and went home.

She complied with a text message that told her to put the keys to the vehicle in her letterbox.

The keys were uplifted, the vehicle moved from Rose Pl, and was later found burnt out.

Justice Graham Lang said although Doyle's involvement did not go as far as to harbour a fugitive or hiding or destroying the weapon used in the killing, she played an important role in the events after the shooting.

"The vehicle was obviously an important link to the shooting because identification of the vehicle could lead to Mr Dodd as the shooter."

Doyle's lawyer Melissa Russell said a sentence of home detention could be difficult given the fact she was looking after her 3-year-old son.

Community detention, coupled with supervision would be appropriate given her involvement was at the lower end of the scale, she submitted.

But Justice Lang said a sentence of community detention would not be seen as a sufficiently deterrent sentence by those minded to offend in such a way in future.

He said Doyle has many good characteristics and that she could be a worthwhile member of the community.