As recent parolee Kingirangi Johnson Karanga held a gun to his ex-partner through the open bedroom window of her West Auckland home, the woman’s toddler walked into the room.
Karanga was being “naughty”, the boy said, telling him to “go away”.
The words were different but the overall sentiment was the same this week as Judge Rebecca Guthrie sentenced the longtime criminal in Waitakere District Court - stacking a year-and-a-half prison term on top of a sentence he was recalled to continue serving after the armed burglary violated his parole.
“I consider she was ... highly vulnerable,” the judge said of the victim, pointing out that she had been sleeping when she awoke at gunpoint and would have known her 2-year-old son was in the next room. “That, I’m sure, would have been a factor that weighed on her mind.”
The judge’s decision to stack the sentence, rather than let it run concurrently with the terms Karanga is already serving, marked the second legal setback this month for the defendant.
Just days earlier, the Court of Appeal declined to toss his prior sentence for a day of mayhem in 2017 in which he drove at speed against the flow of traffic on two Auckland motorways.
“I … watched the Eagle helicopter footage in my chambers and … I was literally holding my breath for other motorists,” another judge said at Karanga’s 2018 sentencing, adding that the “appalling” driving could have easily resulted in a fatal crash.
Karanga, 33, had been released on parole in March 2023. He ended up with a gun at his victim’s Henderson home around 2.30 one morning the following November, days after their five-month relationship ended.
He popped open the closed window next to her bed, damaging the frame in the process, according to the agreed summary of facts for his case.
“Get up,” he ordered after reaching through the window and touching the woman’s head to wake her.
“Mr Karanga pulled out a grey pistol and pointed it directly at [the woman] while he was standing outside,” court documents state. “His hand was resting on the windowsill and the gun was inside the open window.”
He began grilling the woman about where the father of her child was, accusing her of resuming their relationship. He demanded to see messages on her phone and ordered her to unblock Karanga, but she refused.
Karanga appeared to have second thoughts after the toddler’s remonstration. He stopped pointing the gun, started to pace outside, then decided to flee, documents state.
He was arrested the following morning, after police spotted him driving near the woman’s house again. But the defendant didn’t make it easy.
Despite wet roads and a 50km/h speed limit, Karanga sped off and wound his way through residential streets for over 30 minutes while reaching speeds between 100 and 120km/h. He drove through red lights and on the wrong side of the road “despite no police vehicles following him”, authorities noted.
But the police Eagle helicopter had eyes on him the whole time and he was quickly arrested after abandoning the car and trying to flee on foot. Inside the car, police found a loaded .22 pistol and ammunition in the glove box as well as 3g of methamphetamine and a glass pipe.
During this week’s hearing, Judge Guthrie agreed with defence lawyer Justin Wall that it couldn’t be proven the gun was loaded the day earlier when it was pointed at the victim.
But she was less convinced of his argument that the sentence should be concurrent or reduced based on other factors related to his client’s “hard luck story” with the Court of Appeal case.
Wall noted that his client had been handed “a very large sentence” of six years and nine months in 2018 after he was convicted of endangering transport, which carries a maximum possible sentence of 14 years imprisonment, instead of reckless driving, which is punishable by no more than three months.
Years later, the Court of Appeal would make a precedent-setting decision for an unrelated case, stating that the endangering transport charge should not be used for wrong-way motorway drivers.
The appellate panel declined to quash Karanga’s conviction, in part because he was subsequently charged for other crimes - including a series of burglaries in which he urinated on the victims’ clothes. Had his first sentence been lighter, the two subsequent sentences - six months and one year, both to be served cumulatively - would have probably been increased “to reflect the overall criminality” of his offending, the Court of Appeal reckoned.
But Wall suggested in court this week a different scenario that could have resulted from a lighter 2018 sentence - in which his client would have already served his time and wouldn’t have been on parole when he confronted his ex.
Judge Guthrie didn’t follow the reasoning.
“You’re asking me to imagine this scenario, and I have to deal with the circumstances as they exist,” she said. “How can I unwind it if the Court of Appeal hasn’t unwound it?
“...It is an argument that has been run and has not been successful.”
Crown prosecutor Pip McNabb, meanwhile, sought to increase Karanga’s latest sentence due to his “huge criminal history” and the fact he was “re-offending in an extremely serious way” while still on parole.
The judge ordered a three-year starting point for the burglary charge, with a three-month uplift for the dangerous driving, pistol and ammunition. She allowed 35% in discounts for his guilty pleas and troubled background but agreed with the Crown to tack five months back on to the sentence for his prior history and offending on parole.
He was allowed an additional 12 months’ credit for the time he had spent in jail awaiting sentencing, a standard practice even though he would have been behind bars anyway due to the recalled parole.
The end sentence, 18 months, will begin after Karanga’s prior sentences end in January.
Court records show Karanga has over 45 convictions dating back to 2008, including dangerous driving and family violence. The vast majority, however, appear to be part of a remarkably voluminous crime spree in 2017 that included the later-disputed endangering transport charges.
Police said he was in a stolen ute on that October 2017 day as he tried to evade police.
He was driving more than 100km/h on the wrong side of several Auckland motorways as other motorists - many also driving 100km/h - had to take evasive manoeuvres to avoid a head-on crash, the Herald previously reported.
At one point, he managed to cover 3.1km of the Southern Motorway in one minute and 45 seconds despite going in the wrong direction while at other times he continued to drive despite the vehicle’s tyres having been spiked.
The pursuit ended after the stolen vehicle hit two stationary cars.
Another motorist suffered head injuries after he was punched by Karanga that same day during a carjack attempt. Dazed, the motorist accelerated into a lamppost, authorities said.
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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He faces two charges of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.