A homeless ex-con and amateur bomb-maker who caused the evacuation of a busy Auckland Central park earlier this year after claiming to have “enough explosive material to level the Sky Tower” has been returned to prison - to serve three short but cumulative sentences.
Wheelchair user Sean Clifford Nicholas, 52, wore jandals and a black hoodie covered in lavender smiley faces as he was wheeled by security into the Auckland District Court dock yesterday afternoon - one month after he pleaded guilty to making a false statement resulting in the wasteful deployment of police personnel and two counts of breaching the release conditions from his last prison sentence.
Judge Belinda Pidwell lamented there wasn’t a more serious charge that could have been lodged against him, noting she discussed the matter with the police prosecutor and no other charges seemed to fit the unique circumstances of his offending.
“You are a danger to this city and to this country,” she said, listing a “significant and concerning” criminal history that included previous bomb threats and the “quite extraordinary” amount of resources that have been needed to respond to his law-breaking.
“This just has to stop.”
He was sent away to serve eight months’ imprisonment - two months for the false statement, to be served back-to-back with a pair of three-month sentences for breaching release conditions.
Police had good reason to take Nicholas seriously when he called on January 24 stating he would detonate a large stockpile of explosives at Albert Park as soon as the area - bordering the Auckland University and AUT campuses - was evacuated. Widespread disruption followed in the city centre as about 60 officers rushed to the scene, along with firefighters, paramedics and an Army explosive ordinance disposal unit.
Two months and two days earlier, Nicholas had been released on parole from his most recent prison stint. He was known to police as a former bank robber and amateur bomb-maker.
On this occasion, he had acquired items “intentionally selected to resemble” improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, court documents state.
“The defendant chose the [Albert Park] location as it would allow maximum exposure,” authorities said, explaining that Nicholas called a police officer known to him about midday and announced his plan to detonate the material.
Over the next four hours of negotiations, Nicholas “continued to manipulate his assortment of items to appear as though he was assembling a bomb”, according to the agreed summary of facts for the case. But police and firefighters gave up the talks and took “affirmative action” after he began to ignite an unknown liquid that was on him.
The liquids on him were later analysed to include isopropyl alcohol and deck varnish. They were flammable but not explosive, authorities concluded.
After his arrest, Nicholas said he had left his court-ordered post-release residence and had been sleeping rough in a reserve behind the New Lynn Winz office, where he claimed to have stored other IEDs. A subsequent police search of the reserve resulted in the discovery of various chemicals and five “thermos-type containers ... taped up with an unknown liquid inside” that “appeared to be IEDs”.
They also were eventually determined to be flammable but not explosive.
“He expressed the desire to offend by way of IED so he can be shot by police,” police reported the defendant telling them after his arrest.
Nicholas’ extensive criminal history dates back at least a decade, including a 2013 incident in which he was sentenced to prison after entering an Ellerslie bank, making threats with what turned out to be an air pistol.
In 2014 he was convicted of bringing a firearm into a public library, and in 2015 he was convicted of entering the NZ Stock Exchange with a knife and threatening to blow up the building. He was also trespassed from a Grey Lynn library in 2015 after a handwritten bomb recipe was discovered there.
He was sentenced two years later for returning to the same high-rise where the bank incident had taken place, this time demanding to speak to someone at a chemical company based out of the same building.
“You said you had a bomb in your suitcase and you would blow yourself up and all the buildings in the area,” High Court Justice Timothy Brewer noted during the sentencing for that incident. “You added that the bomb was set to a timer which could not be altered.”
More than 100 workers were evacuated from the building and when police approached he lit a wick protruding from the side of the suitcase, court documents state.
“The wick started burning. But it stopped when it reached the side of the suitcase,” Justice Brewer noted. “You said that you had prepared and placed chemicals in the suitcase with the intention of blowing both yourself and the building up.
“A police bomb expert formed the view that the fuse in the suitcase would not have achieved your intended purpose, but, if introduced to a significant heat source, the contents of the suitcase had the potential to burn and emit toxic fumes.”
In 2018, he was arrested at Mt Eden train station after arriving there with a petrol canister and a lighter and last year he was sentenced to prison for another bomb threat, Judge Pidewell noted during yesterday’s hearing.
The High Court was told in 2017 that Nicholas uses a wheelchair because of fibromyalgia, which causes continual pain. But Justice Brewer said there was an additional suggestion “that being in a wheelchair is also a reaction to your various mental health problems”.
“You have paranoid, antisocial and borderline traits,” the judge noted. “The point is that your mental health is not so serious that the mental health authorities can intervene without your consent, but you are, as a result of the personality disorders, assessed as a very high and continuing risk to the public.”
Justice Brewer ordered a sentence in 2017 of two years - a length at which home detention is often considered as an alternative to prison. But he said he couldn’t allow home detention due to the ongoing risk.
The false statement charge that Nicholas was sentenced to yesterday carries a maximum punishment of three months’ imprisonment, of which Nicholas had already served two months while awaiting sentencing. Violation of release conditions carries a maximum sentence of one year’s imprisonment.
Defence lawyer Nicholas Mani asked for a sentence of time served, but he acknowledged his client would be homeless if released immediately. Because of that, he opposed requests from probation that Nicholas be fitted with an electronic ankle bracelet and be barred from entering Auckland Central. If released, he could potentially go to Auckland Mission for support, but that is in the city centre, he noted.
He noted that his client was suffering from psychological issues on the day of the standoff and was in a way reaching out for help.
“However, he went about the wrong way of acquiring that help,” he said, suggesting of the two months in jail Nicholas has already served: “The punitive element of the sentence has been met ... so the court should now focus on a rehabilitative sentence.”
But Judge Pidwell was unconvinced.
“How are we going to stop this from happening again?” she asked. “He’s breached release conditions twelve times before.
“I need to craft a sentence that will protect the community from you. All the prison sentences that have been imposed on you in the past have not stopped you from this behaviour and I’m not sure the next one will.”
Upon release from prison later this year, the judge ordered he be electronically monitored. He is also barred from possessing weapons and a number of chemicals without permission from his parole officer.
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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