Desmond Hiko, now 23, was recorded on a prison phone call admitting his participation in two back-to-back May 2022 shootings.
“They were all having a hui outside his house and then boom, we just pulled out all the guns and went pop, pop, pop,” he said of the first shooting, noting also in the calls that he “didn’t wanna ride” but agreed to do so anyway.
When explaining the scenario later to a probation officer, Hiko explained that he didn’t want to be there but focused on “completing the mission”, which the officer noted made it sound like a video game.
“You agreed, saying that’s what it was like,” Justice Mathew Downs said last week as he ordered a sentence of four years and seven months’ imprisonment.
In all, there were 21 shootings and nine arsons that authorities attributed to the wider gang conflict, which lasted from May 2 that year until June 10. By the time a peace deal was brokered, Labour Police Minister Poto Williams was sacked for having “lost focus”.
Hiko, who goes by the street name “Pacer”, pleaded guilty in November to two counts of discharging a firearm with reckless disregard for the safety of others and unlawfully using two stolen cars.
Co-defendant Joshua Baker, known as Stinger or Little Smoke, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison for participating in the same two shootings. A third defendant, Vincent Tutaki Steven Toby, aka Sneak or Violent, was sentenced to four years and one month’s in prison for his participation in one of the shootings. He was not present at the house where the children slept, according to court documents.
A fourth man, 28-year-old Haupapa Snowy Paul, earlier admitted to participating in the first shooting and to a later conspiracy — hatched while he was in jail — to murder the same man who was mistakenly targeted at the Henderson house. The conspiracy also wasn’t successful.
Paul, who goes by the nicknames GlassMask and Gun Smoke Killer, denied participating in the Henderson shooting with the children inside. But he was found guilty of that charge on Friday following a short judge-alone trial before Justice Graham Lang.
He is set to be sentenced for all charges in April.
According to court documents, Hiko, Toby, Paul and Baker carpooled in a stolen Mitsubishi Colt to a Glen Osborne Terrace address in Flat Bush at about 6.50pm on the day of the two shootings. They opened fire on the first home with at least three guns.
A patched Tribesmen member was home, resulting in a shootout between the parties. As a result, neighbours’ homes and vehicles in the South Auckland suburb were also shot.
The defendants then fled in the stolen Mitsubishi — abandoning it, with the motor still running, about 750 metres away. Four-and-a-half hours later, Hiko, Paul and Baker were in a stolen Subaru Legacy headed to a Rathgar Rd home in Henderson.
They were trying to target another patched Tribesmen member, not realising he no longer lived there. But his children and former partner still did.
The defendants drove the vehicle down the long driveway then revved the engine until the children’s mother woke up and looked out the window to investigate.
“Multiple shots were then fired,” court documents state. “One projectile entered the window where [the mother] was standing, smashing the glass and becoming embedded in the bedroom wall opposite the window. The projectile passed closely by [her] head, causing her to fall to the ground.”
At least four shots had been fired from two guns, police later determined.
A police car outside a driveway on Rathgar Rd in Henderson, West Auckland, where a home was shot at during a night of chaos in May 2022. Photo / Hayden Woodward
At about 1.45am the following day, police spotted the stolen Subaru at a petrol station and followed it. Hiko was arrested after he got out of the vehicle and onto a waiting motorbike.
Two days after the shootings, Toby was arrested after a vehicle with him and other associates fled police in Mt Albert. Police did not pursue on the ground, but a police helicopter traced the vehicle as it stopped in New Windsor and a guitar bag was taken from the boot into a home. The bag, which contained two prohibited semi-automatic AR-15 rifles and ammunition, was found by police later that day in a crawlspace at the home.
A subsequent search of one of the defendants’ phones revealed photos of Baker and Toby posing with the weapons.
The Killer Beez and Tribesmen had been long-time rivals but had co-existed in relative peace for several years when tensions started to heat up in March 2022 after Killer Beez members were believed to have shot at an address where Tribesmen were celebrating after a patching ceremony.
Tensions increased the following month after Killer Beez members were mocked by the other gang online following a filmed Auckland motorway crash involving several motorbikes.
Then all hell seemed to break loose on May 24. In addition to the Henderson and Flat Bush shootings, the night of chaos included shootings in Papatoetoe, Ōtara, Papakura, Te Atatū and Mt Albert.
Hiko faced up to seven years in prison for the shootings, and during a sentence indication hearing last year Justice Downs set a starting point of four-and-a-half years for the second shooting.
During last week’s hearing, defence lawyer Hannah Johnson sought sentence reductions for his youth, efforts at rehabilitation, his guilty pleas and his background. Impulsivity and poor decision-making associated with youth were direct contributors to his participation in the shootings, she argued, noting that her client was not considered the leader of the group or the instigator of the violence.
Crown prosecutor Cameron Fountain was unopposed to all reductions except for his Hiko’s youth, noting that gang offending with firearms is of particular concern to the public.
Justice Downs agreed, declining a youth discount.
Both shootings were pre-meditated and posed a risk to the public, he pointed out.
The judge uplifted the sentence by 18 months for the first shooting then allowed reductions of 15% for his guilty pleas, 5% for his rehabilitation efforts and 10% for his troubled background marred by family violence from a young age, early exposure to drugs and alcohol and placement in and out of state care.
“I do not doubt your deprived background contributed to the offending,” he explained.
The judge then added a three-month uplift for a 2019 robbery with a weapon and two additional months for having offended while under release conditions. Hiko, the court was told, has spent the majority of his adult life in prison.
“The seriousness of your offending and its nature could give rise to a minimum period of imprisonment,” the judge mentioned as the hearing concluded.
He ultimately decided not to impose one, however, due to Hiko’s age.
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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