Kiwi TikTok influencer Darren Maheno sentenced to prison in California after being accused of attempted murder

Former Invercargill resident Darren Maheno, who had a large following on TikTok before vanishing from the platform, was charged with attempted murder in California last year. Photo / TikTok

A popular former social media comedian from Invercargill who was accused of attempted murder last year after moving to the United States has been sentenced to eight years in a California prison after pleading guilty to reduced charges.

Darren John Maheno, 46, was once a prolific TikTok user who amassed millions of views before vanishing from the platform and leaving New Zealand.

He resurfaced in the media spotlight last September after officers with the Los Angeles Police Department responded to a 4.15am domestic disturbance at a suburban Woodland Hills home and charged him with a violent attack on his then-partner.

Details of the incident have been revealed to the Herald for the first time.

“The victim and defendant came home after an evening out,” said LA County deputy district attorney Cindy Wallace, explaining that a verbal dispute between the couple led to a physical attack on Maheno’s partner.

“This was an unprovoked attack that went on for quite some time,” Wallace added. “He beat the victim with his hands, strangled her and hit her with a stick.”

There was never an explanation given for his violence, she said.

In an LA County Superior Court hearing on September 8 this year - one year to the day after he pleaded not guilty to the attempted murder charge, which carries a potential life sentence - he was instead sentenced for one count of injuring a partner causing great bodily injury and one count of criminal threats.

The eight-year prison term had been negotiated before the hearing between the prosecutor and public defender Sarah Weil-Reback. The plea agreement was approved by Judge Michael Jesic.

Both charges are serious enough to count as strikes under California’s three-strikes law, which has some similarities to New Zealand’s recently abolished three-strikes law. However, a person facing a third-strike-eligible offence in California, regardless of the normal sentence, would face a life sentence with a minimum non-parole period of 25 years.

“This was a violent case,” Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Venusse Navid told the Herald, explaining that the maximum possible sentence for the charges Maheno pleaded guilty to would have been about 18 years.

That was due in part to allegations of great bodily injury and the use of a weapon, she said.

“To avoid putting the victim through a trial we offered him eight years,” Navid added. “The victim was physically and emotionally traumatised by the defendant and is happy to have closure.”

Under California sentencing law, Maheno will have to serve 85 per cent of his sentence before he can apply for parole, meaning he is unlikely to be released until 2030 or later.

Former Invercargill resident Darren Maheno, who had a large TikTok following, has been sentenced to prison in California after he was charged last year with attempted murder. Photo / TikTok

Upon his eventual release, he’ll most likely be deported to New Zealand.

Maheno had more than 165,000 followers on TikTok and his videos had racked up 2.8 million likes before he deactivated his account in 2021.

His content often consisted of humorous and absurd moments, such as hanging from a rafter by his feet like a bat, pretending to be an evil German inventor and reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Italian while dressed as a priest.

In February 2021, his antics were featured in a remix by Auckland producer Jawash 685, famous for hit song Savage Love with Jason Derulo. But by that time Maheno’s interest in the social media platform seemed to be waning.

“This is freaky. TikTok is giving me anxiety,” he said in a downbeat January 2021 post as he reviewed viewer comments. “I’m a f***ing ticking bomb - tick, tick, tick, tick.”

Following the arrest last September, a New Zealand-based mutual friend of Maheno and his partner shared blurred photos of the woman in a hospital bed and snippets of a Messenger exchange with her. She had given him permission to publish the screenshots on social media to combat misinformation about the case -including widespread rumours on TikTok that Maheno had been charged with murder.

“God help him,” the woman said of Maheno, expressing fear that he will get hurt in prison. “I’ve tried to love him. He suffers from madness.”

The mutual friend of the couple predicted to his own TikTok followers last year that Maheno was in “lots of trouble”.

“She was literally beaten to a pulp by Darren,” he said.

Another person who said she spoke to Maheno’s partner after the attack previously told the Herald the woman had suffered memory loss as a result of her injuries. The partner wanted to see him sent back to New Zealand so he would no longer be “her problem to worry about”, said the friend, who asked not to be identified by name.

The victim did not immediately respond to a request from the Herald this week to speak to her.

She testified at a preliminary hearing but declined to give a victim impact statement at Maheno’s sentencing this month.

“She is understandably still traumatised and fearful,” said Wallace, the prosecutor.

Maheno kept a low profile on social media after leaving TikTok, but he posted a rare public Facebook tribute to his partner on Mother’s Day 2022, several months before his crime.

“I cannot thank you enough for the way you love me. Miracles happen every day and you are the miracle in my life,” he wrote. “Thank you for being my best friend my lover my life, my someone I trust. Your honesty integrity and faithfulness are like that of a fortress I love it I love you.

“We share so much joy laughter tears and sorrows silliness and happiness with a mix of our own craziness. I live for new memories with you through good times and the bad. I will be here there anywhere for you.”

The recent guilty pleas were not Maheno’s first violence-related offences involving makeshift weapons, although they appear to have been by far the most serious.

He was previously sentenced in New Zealand to community work and intensive supervision for assault on a female and possession of a wooden pole, which was deemed to be an offensive weapon, the Southland Times reported in 2013. He was also sentenced to supervision several years earlier for possessing an axe and an aluminium telescope pole, also deemed to be offensive weapons, Stuff previously reported.

A final hearing for the current case involving restitution is scheduled for November in the Van Nuys Courthouse in the northern suburbs of Los Angeles, where Maheno has returned repeatedly over the past year for pre-trial hearings.

Maheno’s lawyer did not immediately respond today to a request for comment.

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.