“Absolutely no explanation was put forward by you as to why you chose to attack this man in this way,” Judge McDonald said, noting that Fualema would later tell a probation officer he was so drunk that morning he didn’t remember what he had done.
The judge ordered 18 months’ imprisonment, with four of those months an uplift based on his previous convictions in Australia.
Fualema, who had moved to Australia as a child, was accompanied in court today by his parents. They arrived from Brisbane for the hearing.
He faced deportation from Australia after being sentenced in the Brisbane District Court in December 2020 to four years’ prison for a series of attacks over the course of one night that had occurred six months earlier.
A prosecutor at the time described the offending as “gratuitous, unprovoked violence, committed against members of the community in public places”, according to the Brisbane Courier Mail.
He had been drinking with friends and family that night when he decided to chase down and start throwing punches at a teenage international student who had just dodged a bottle while walking past Fualema’s home around 10pm, authorities alleged.
He and others then got into a fight with three other men before he forced his way into nearby student accommodation and punched the 45-year-old building manager so hard the man suffered memory loss, the newspaper reported. During a taxi ride that same night, the group refused to pay and Fualema punched the driver with enough force that he needed surgery for cartilage displacement in his throat, the court was told.
About 4am, the next target was a man who was knocked out cold after venturing outside his home to investigate a noise.
“Fualema and the others then ran inside to where the man’s partner and 7-year-old daughter had barricaded themselves inside their rooms,” the Courier Mail reported from the sentencing hearing. “The group ransacked the house breaking their television, overturning furniture and stealing an iPad and other items.”
A couple living next door were also attacked after they heard the mother and daughter screaming and went to help.
In addition to today’s 18-month sentence for assault with intent to injure the man, Fualema was ordered to serve a concurrent 12-month sentence for the male assaults female charge resulting from the attack on the man’s partner. A six-month sentence was added for his breaches of the Returning Offenders Act by failing to stay in contact with authorities or alert them when he changed addresses.
The law, which allows Corrections to monitor certain people who have been imprisoned for a year or more in another country, is not meant as a second punishment but to help with re-integration into New Zealand life, the judge noted.
“You just decided not to take part in that,” he said.
As for the assault charge, the judge said it was “entirely luck” that the victim wasn’t seriously injured, resulting in a heftier charge, and that he decided not to participate in court proceedings.
“The protection of the public is a paramount consideration [for] unprovoked street assault,” he said, noting that Fualema has been assessed as a high risk of re-offending and of causing future harm to others.
Fualema, who previously played for Brisbane-area rugby league clubs the Easts Tigers and Bulimba Valleys Bulldogs, hugged his partner from behind a glass divider before he was escorted to a holding cell by courthouse security to begin his sentence.
“Love you, Mum,” he said as his mother wept.
