Kristina Reid appears in High Court at Rotorua for sentencing. Photo / Kelly Makiha
Kristina Reid appears in High Court at Rotorua for sentencing. Photo / Kelly Makiha
A woman involved in a drug debt revenge kidnapping plot and brutal beating will serve seven months' home detention in emergency housing.
Kristina Reid has been on electronically-monitored bail for the past 13 months at the Rotorua accommodation and has breached her bail conditions three times.
She appeared in theHigh Court at Rotorua on Friday where she was sentenced after earlier pleading guilty to charges of kidnapping and participating in an organised criminal group.
The emergency accommodation is contracted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development for housing the homeless.
Justice Campbell said Reid might need to apply for a variation if she needed to move elsewhere while still carrying out her sentence.
Her lawyer, Matthew Jenkins, confirmed the provider would ensure she had another address to move to if that was the case.
Jenkins noted Reid was subjected to strict electronically-monitored bail conditions and despite breaching them three times, he said, they were only minor breaches considering the terms and the length of time she was on bail.
Another offender, Bobby Tipiwai, also appeared in the High Court at Rotorua for sentencing yesterday relating to the same offending.
He was jailed for two years and 11 months after pleading guilty to kidnapping and participating in an organised criminal group.
Reid and Tipiwai were charged after a group of Black Power women hatched a plan to kidnap a woman on two different occasions in 2020, hold her ransom and beat and torture her.
The victim was wrongly accused of stealing methamphetamine from the head of a women's chapter of Black Power, known as Black Power Sisters Rotorua Fordblock.
The victim was told her father needed to bring thousands of dollars in ransom otherwise she would be killed.
The jailed women Daisy Dixon (left), Rickylee Dixon and Harete Ohlson were members of Black Power Sisters Rotorua Fordblock. Photo / Andrew Warner
Ring leader Rickylee Dixon, 37, was jailed last year for nine years and six months. Two other main offenders, her daughter Daisy Dixon, 19, and associate Harete Ohlson, were also jailed for six years and nine months and six years respectively.
Shaun Te Kiri was jailed for two years and 10 months for his role in the kidnapping, Angela Dehar was given nine months' home detention and Thorne Tucker was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment.
The kidnappings were a means to extort money as a way of recovering a perceived debt after Dixon thought the victim stole methamphetamine from her car - an accusation that turned out to be false.
The victim's ordeal included being bound, gagged, beaten with a tomahawk and smashed over the head with a metal baseball bat. A sharp hook-like object was inserted into her lip and her elbow was bent back until it snapped.
She was transported around Rotorua in the back of a truck as she drifted in and out of consciousness and was urinating on herself. She was only saved after her father asked male members of the Black Power gang for help.
The first kidnapping happened on September 12 when the woman was taken from her bed in the middle of the night.
She was severely bashed by the women and money was taken from her father.
The woman was kidnapped again on October 21. She was eventually taken to the Kowhai Motel Colonial Motel - a motel that has emergency housing - and was subjected to a severe beating.
Reid's involvement in the plot was described as minor. At the time, she was the partner of Te Kiri. She was only involved in the second kidnapping.
Messages were sent from Reid's phone for the victim to meet the group of women at a shopping complex, where she was put into a car. It was later said Dixon was using Reid's phone to send the messages.
Reid was present when the group of women were driving the victim around in the car and when they went to a bar to spend some of the ransom money.
Bobby Tipiwai at an earlier appearance in the High Court at Rotorua. Photo / Andrew Warner
Tipiwai was involved in the first kidnapping. He didn't actively drag the victim from her home but he was there and told the victim she had no choice but to go with them.
