Inmate Toutai Loto’ahea helped knock a guard unconscious at Mt Eden Prison. Photo / File
A violent prisoner already serving an extended sentence for attacking a fellow inmate has had his sentence lengthened again – this time for giving a Corrections officer a concussion.
Toutai Loto’ahea, 21, was serving time at Auckland’s Mt Eden Correctional Facility in September 2023 when a prison officer did him a favour by allowing him to use an office phone.
But after the officer unlocked a sallyport door to the hallway outside the office, another prisoner rushed in with Loto’ahea.
The officer asked the other prisoner if everything was okay, at which point the prisoner punched him to the ground, court documents state.
According to an agreed summary of facts “once on the ground, Mr Loto’ahea began stomping on [the officer’s] head and torso”.
“Mr Loto’ahea continued by punching [him] multiple times to the head and torso.”
The duo then returned to their block, leaving the guard unconscious on the floor.
The attack was hardly a whodunit, as it was recorded on CCTV.
However, a charge of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm wasn’t filed until March this year due to what was described in court documents as a police paperwork backlog.
In the meantime, Loto’ahea has received two other sentences.
In October 2023, one month after the guard attack, he was sentenced to two years, 11 months and 14 days’ imprisonment for an unrelated wounding with intent to injure charge, as well as aggravated burglary and assaulting a police officer.
By New Year’s Day 2024, Loto’ahea had been transferred to the maximum security Paremoremo Prison on Auckland’s North Shore when he and others attacked longtime inmate Lopeti Telefoni, who was playing chess in the dayroom.
The summary of facts for that case outlines how Loto’ahea and fellow inmate Te Whetu Cashell approached Telefoni from behind and began attacking him without warning.
Cashell pulled a shiv from his waistband and began stabbing while Loto’ahea threw punches at Telefoni – himself a violent prisoner who was found guilty of manslaughter in 2021 for stomping prisoner Blake Lee to death.
In a game of cat-and-mouse, Telefoni repeatedly ran from the group, then was cornered and suffered more injuries. Cashell stabbed him in the upper torso, close to his neck, and then stabbed him repeatedly in the back as he fled a different corner of the dayroom.
A Corrections officer later found a sharpened plastic tip wrapped in cloth. The injuries were not life-threatening.
Loto’ahea was sentenced last November to 11 months’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to a reduced charge of injuring with intent to injure.
While in prison, he has engaged in some educational programmes, his lawyer said last week, pointing to her client’s youth and urging Judge David Sharp not to impose a crushing sentence.
Crown prosecutor Ryan Benic pointed out that Loto’ahea has already benefited from a reduced charge. Instead of wounding, he pleaded guilty to injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, carrying a maximum possible sentence of 10 years instead of 14.
“Others need to know this type of behaviour is unacceptable,” Judge Sharp said. “There’s nothing good about it.”
He pointed out that, like Loto’ahea, the guard had to be in the rough prison environment day in and day out.
“If [that was] done to you, I’d be equally unhappy about the result,” he said.
The judge settled on a starting point of three years and eight months before factoring in an uplift for his previous offending and discounts for his guilty plea, youth and a report about his upbringing that the judge characterised as sad reading.
A final reduction of 30% was factored in to account for the fact that Loto’ahea’s prison term would have likely been different had he been sentenced for everything all at once rather than on three separate occasions.
The end sentence was 22 months.
Judge Sharp ordered it to be served cumulatively, meaning it won’t begin until next March, when Loto’ahea would have been otherwise set for release.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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