A smiling, placid fugitive who created one of the largest manhunts in Auckland for years made a brief appearance in court today without the theatrics he had promised.
Tifaga Atanoa, 33, stood for about two minutes in the dock at Manukau District Court which sat in Pakuranga because of Auckland'spower outage today, before he was remanded in custody without plea to appear again in a fortnight.
Atanoa was arrested late on Friday night by armed police 12 days after he failed to appear on firearms and drugs charges. Police said then he was using large amounts of methamphetamine, was armed and should not be approached. He was not carrying a gun when arrested.
The patched Mongrel Mob member was calm and smiling throughout his appearance today and with a wave of one hand acknowledged the remand in custody by Judge Arjit Singh.
Atanoa was due to have appeared in Manukau District Court near the Manukau Shopping Centre earlier in the day but when the electricity to a large part of Auckland failed for several hours, all prisoners in custody waiting to appear in Manukau were taken to Pakuranga which still had power.
Before today's court appearance Atanoa was spoken to by a duty solicitor but court officials said he became unruly and was not taken into court for his scheduled appearance.
However, court staff said he had calmed down and he was the second person to appear at the start of the afternoon session.
A judge had earlier refused media applications for Atanoa to be filmed and photographed in court because he had not consulted a lawyer but at the afternoon appearance, a duty solicitor appeared for him.
His girlfriend, Paula Tromp de Haas, 20, was charged with helping Atanoa avoid arrest. She was remanded on bail to appear again tomorrow. A 52-year-old man and a Mt Roskill woman, 28, also face charges over the manhunt for Atanoa.
Police said one of the reasons for the large manhunt was that Atanoa had told several sources he would not be taken back into custody.
After his arrest on Friday night he was to have appeared in Manukau District Court on Saturday morning but his unruly behaviour ruled out an appearance in court and in a brief court cell hearing, he was remanded in custody until today.
