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B.J. Thorner-Harrison was sentenced to three years and eight months for a violent robbery.
The robbery involved stabbing a store employee and resulted in $21,000 in losses.
Judge Kirsten Lummis cited his premeditation and previous offences, but also his youth and neurodiversity, in her sentencing decision.
With less than three hours until Christmas Eve, Auckland resident B.J. Thorner-Harrison was stuck at home on electronically monitored bail and wanted money for presents.
His not-well-thought-out solution to the predicament – which involved cutting off his ankle monitor, participating in a violent robbery at a North Shorebottle shop and stabbing an employee with the jagged edge of a broken bottle – has now landed him in prison.
The heist occurred at a Birkenhead Bottle-O store in 2023, resulting in the hospitalisation of the employee who was stabbed. It wouldn’t be the first – or the last – in a string of bad decisions Thorner-Harrison made towards the end of that year.
Three days after the heist, on Boxing Day, he would punch two courthouse guards in the dock after a judge decided bail was no longer suitable.
“I f***ed these bitches up,” he boasted as he was taken past other prisoners en route to a holding cell.
The judge described the attack at the Bottle-O Birkenhead as "brazen and vicious". Photo / Hayden Woodward
“It was a brazen and vicious attack,” Auckland District Court Judge Kirsten Lummis said at the 20-year-old Glenfield resident’s sentencing in January, noting his premediation and his gloating as she ordered his robbery sentence lengthened to account for the attacks.
She settled on an end sentence of three years and eight months in prison for nine different charges. Newly released court documents outline Thorner-Harrison’s crime spree and what went into Judge Lummis' sentencing decision.
Wrong-way rush hour pursuit
Thorner-Harrison had already been on home detention, having been convicted of burglaries committed earlier that year, when the spree began in October 2023.
About 2 on a Monday afternoon, he left his home despite an ankle monitor and went with a friend to a Wilson’s carpark, where the duo attempted to steal a Kia by smashing the rear window and tampering with the ignition.
“It seems the two of you together cause problems,” Judge Lummis said of the friend, who would also be involved in the Bottle-O robbery two months later.
The co-defendant, 19, is scheduled for sentencing next month.
The two left the Kia behind and instead fled in a stolen Honda Fit.
Police spotted the Honda, realising it had been stolen, a short time later in Greenlane and attempted to pull over the vehicle. It instead fled.
What followed was a two-hour pursuit that stretched over large swaths of the city during rush hour.
“On a number of occasions, the vehicle has driven on the wrong side of the road and at excessive speeds,” Auckland City West’s acting prevention manager inspector, Ivan Sarich, said at the time.
The vehicle went as far south as Papakura before turning around and heading back towards the city, going over the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
Police monitored the car via the Eagle helicopter.
“After driving around the Shore it headed back into the city and then south again, ending up in Papatoetoe where units ... successfully spiked it at the intersection of Great South Rd and Grande Vue Rd,” Sarich said. “Police quickly took two people into custody without incident.”
In addition to charges of interfering with a motor vehicle and unlawfully getting into another vehicle, Thorner-Harrison pleaded guilty to breaching home detention.
The teen appears to have remained in custody for about a month before he was again given bail.
He was charged with another count of unlawfully getting into a motor vehicle after police spotted him running from a stolen Honda Accord on December 4, a month and a half after the last chase.
Bottle-O heist
By December 23, Thorner-Harrison had again been fitted with an ankle bracelet. He was on electronically monitored bail for the October incident as well as post-detention conditions for the home-based burglary sentences earlier in the year.
The most serious crime of the batch was about to occur.
“I know from the presentence report you were hoping to score some money and your motivation was to get Christmas presents at that stage or money for Christmas,” Judge Lummis noted at his sentencing.
He and two others travelled to the Birkenhead liquor store in a stolen Nissan Wingroad about 9.30 that night.
“All three of you got out of the car and ran towards the automatic glass doors at the front,” the judge noted. “You were all wearing face coverings and gloves.”
A co-defendant kicked the glass with enough force to break it, then ran to the counter and started throwing several glass bottles with “significant force” at the first victim. He continued to throw bottles, causing other stock to shatter, as the worker ran for cover in the back of the store.
Meanwhile, Thorner-Harrison ran into the store with a long metal pole and attempted to hit the worker who was trying to dodge the airborne bottles. The third assailant took advantage of the chaos to pull the cash register from the counter and put it in the stolen getaway car.
While the two others then turned their attention to pilfering cigarettes from behind the counter, Thorner-Harrison noticed another worker emerge from the staff-only area and began to attack him.
“You approached that victim with the metal pole and swung it at him,” the judge recounted. “You chased him down the aisle of the store and struck him with the pole forcefully across his head. You punched him about three times about his head before he was able to wrestle the pole from you.
“You picked up a glass bottle and smashed it against a fridge causing it to shatter and become sharp. You stabbed the victim in the flank with the sharp glass before throwing the broken bottle at the victim’s head. You ran to the front of the store, picked up several further bottles and threw them at both victims.”
The bandits continued to throw wine bottles at the victims before fleeing with more cigarettes and some bottles of whisky. But their escape, with a co-defendant behind the wheel of the stolen Nissan, was short-lived.
Judge Lummis described another “pretty gnarly police chase” that ended with the vehicle being stopped by police spikes.
The final two charges – both aggravated assault – resulted three days later “when you were in the position not dissimilar from the position that you are in now, with two court security officers with you”, the judge noted.
“At the time you were remanded in custody, you did not like that,” she said. “You turned and punched one of the officers in the face using your right hand and then a further five times using alternative hands. His nose began to bleed instantly.
“You then turned to the second victim and punched him in the face, causing his nose to bleed instantly too, punching him a further two times before further staff arrived and managed to restrain you.”
Both incidents were caught on CCTV. During the Bottle-O robbery, the judge noted, the assailants’ masks slipped down and at one point the defendant’s hat fell off, making it easy to identify him.
Neurodiverse, ‘easily persuaded’
In total, the heist resulted in an estimated $21,000 in losses to the business – including $3000 in missing cash and significant damage to the store. Luckily, the judge noted, the store had insurance.
But that was little comfort to the employees who were traumatised, the judge said.
The worker stabbed by Thorner-Harrison ended up missing eight weeks of work. Both workers described lingering anxiety and fear. The other victim described suffering insomnia and flashbacks as a result of the raid.
The officers who were attacked also described lingering effects, including a considerable impact on how they intended to go about their jobs in the future.
Crown prosecutor Mohammed Chiraagh sought a starting point of six and a half years' imprisonment for the robbery, with uplifts for the defendant’s other offending. He acknowledged Thorner-Harrison qualified for several discounts as well but noted that if all of the defence’s proposed discounts were imposed it would result in a sentence reduction of 85%.
“That is simply too excessive to what the offending is,” Chiraagh said.
He suggested only a small discount for remorse despite a letter from the defendant that read in part: “I just want to apologise for what I did to them and their families.” The discounts have to be weighed against the continued escalation in his offending, he argued.
Defence lawyer Matthew Goodwin acknowledged that the 85% figure was unlikely to be adopted by the judge. The requests included 25% for the defendant’s “early-ish” guilty pleas, 15% for his youth, 15% for a troubled background in which he was placed with multiple foster homes as a child and attended seven schools, 10% for his rehabilitation efforts and remorse and 20% for his neurodiversity.
But when looked at all together, Goodwin suggested the discounts should at least top 50% and perhaps go as high as 70%.
Judge Lummis agreed that 85% was unfeasible, pointing to a High Court decision last year in which 17-year-old Albert Park rapist Peter Kosetatino had his sententence lengthened after another Auckland District Court judge allowed 77% in discounts.
“Simply going through a mathematical exercise and adding up all of the discounts can sometimes lead us into error and there is an important need to stand back and look at the discounts globally,” she explained.
The judge allowed a six-year starting point for the robbery, with an additional year added for the attack on the guards and four months added for the earlier offending. She then ordered a 10% uplift for Thorner-Harrison’s nine-page rap sheet – most of it from the Youth Court – before considering reductions.
She allowed 20% for his guilty pleas, 15% for his background, 10% for neurodiversity issues, 10% for youth and 5% for remorse.
“You are still very young ... and I see from the information before me, you are easily persuaded by others,” she said. “That is also tied up with your neurodiversity, which is also a factor linking to your offending.”
She encouraged the defendant to seek out counselling while in prison.
“It will now be for the Parole Board to decide when it is you get to be returned to your partner and daughter,” she said. “It will be for you to work really hard on courses and opportunities available to you in prison to do what you can to try and stay out of trouble in the future.”
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.
