When Piha’s surf lifesaving club was looted of tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment days after the remote West Auckland community was devastated by flooding and landslips during last year’s Cyclone Gabrielle, livid officials described the burglary as “nasty, gutless” and unfathomably mean-spirited.
Dylan James Hendriks, a drug addict and serial thief, would a month later be charged with the burglary after police found some of the missing items while executing a search warrant at his Blockhouse Bay home amid an unrelated criminal investigation.
But although the 30-year-old has admitted to similar activity – he looted an unfinished housing development in New Lynn one week earlier, taking advantage of lax security as the Auckland region buckled down for its second deadly storm in as many weeks – he always insisted he didn’t commit the Piha heist. It was the only charge among many he was willing to go to trial to fight.
This week he was sentenced for an amended charge of receiving stolen property, which he pleaded guilty to in May. The reduced charge, carrying a maximum punishment of seven years’ imprisonment instead of the 10-year maximum for burglary, was a concession of sorts by police that the original allegation might not have withstood the rigours of a trial that had been scheduled to begin that same day.
He remains, however, the only person arrested in relation to the incident.
The damage to Auckland’s west coast on the evening of February 13, 2023, had been unprecedented and initially resulted in 33 Piha homes being deemed uninhabitable and 21 yellow stickered. In Muriwai, a similar beach community to the north, two volunteer firefighters died after they were caught in a landslip.
Access to Piha had been initially blocked by slips then later blocked by a cordon for more than two months, restricting access to one of Auckland’s most popular tourist and surfing beaches, after owners of the damaged homes expressed fear their properties were vulnerable to looting. The burglary of the United North Piha Lifeguard Service sometime between February 19 and 21 would have done nothing to allay those fears.
The lifeguard service had been operating out of two portable buildings while construction was under way on a new facility, with a ranch slider providing relatively easy access for someone with ill intent. Among the items that went missing were a patrol laptop, 17 hand-held radios and charging bases. The radios alone were worth $35,000, although useless to anyone outside the club because they had been programmed for a private radio network.
They couldn’t even be turned on without activating GPS, an official told the media at the time, expressing hope the unidentified thief would return them anonymously or drop them off at a police station.
“For someone to do this, it’s just unfathomable,” United North Piha Lifeguard Services president Robert Ferguson said in 2023, describing the incident as having added stress to an already difficult situation.
“Several weeks ago we had a double drowning in which a lot of people were involved. Our beach is very big – we rely on radios to communicate.”
The nonprofit’s then-director of lifesaving, Victoria Mulrennan, also didn’t mince words.
“This is a nasty, gutless act,” she said at the time. “We are still trying to respond to the impact of the cyclone, and these thieves have put lives at risk, at a time when Piha is already struggling. Our community is still largely cut off, and we want to put our focus on recovery efforts. Without these radios, our ability to operate patrols is severely limited.”
Auckland Emergency Management duty controller Rachel Kelleher added to the criticism: “To be going out and doing that to be people already in a state of high emotional distress is just wrong.”
The radios were never recovered, never even turned on. Officials now wonder if the culprit read about the GPS locators in media coverage of the burglary and, instead of turning them in as suggested, dumped the loot instead.
The agreed summary of facts for Hendriks’ receiving stolen property case makes no mention of the club’s missing radios. But police did find in his home a “speciality oxygen box” valued at more than $500 that had been taken from the club. Instead of having a resuscitation device inside, it contained about $300 worth of surf lifesaving training manuals.
A search of Hendriks’ phone showed he had also photographed the missing laptop belonging to the club, valued at about $800, while at his home on February 22. It was adorned with club stickers.
While reviewing the case this week, Judge Lisa Tremewan acknowledged police had tossed the burglary charge after reviewing the evidence. But that didn’t make his having received the stolen property any less distasteful, she said.
“You’ve never disputed the ... shameful and embarrassing facts that this property from the surf lifesaving club was at your place and in your possession,” she reminded him as he stood in the dock at Waitākere District Court. “Surf lifesaving clubs do critically important work on behalf of the community saving lives.
“It’s also well known that surf lifesaving clubs are strapped for cash and rely on the community to support them financially so they can continue on their important work. So it is the case when offending happens against an agency like that, it does leave a bad taste in the mouth, because it is particularly shameful to be involved in any kind of offending against an organisation like that.”
But the judge also agreed with police prosecutor Jesse Holvast that the sentencing was for a “washing up” charge of sorts – a late add-on to a slew of offending for which he had already pleaded guilty and been sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment. He has already spent just under a year behind bars as a remand prisoner while the various cases worked their way through the justice system.
As such, the focus was less on punitive aspects of the sentence as much as giving Hendriks support in his recovery with the hope of preventing further crime sprees.
During the March sentencing, Auckland District Court Judge David Sharp acknowledged the defendant’s addiction issues and said he would happily swap out the prison term for an electronically monitored sentence if he could find a spot at a live-in rehabilitation facility.
Since then, defence lawyer Ollie Salt told Judge Tremewan this week, his client had made tremendous strides. He’s been released on parole but remains under strict monitoring, he said, suggesting monitoring could continue.
“Mr Hendriks is very motivated to turn his life around,” Salt said, noting his client wrote a letter of apology to the court showing substantial remorse. “A [second] term of imprisonment would be absolutely crushing for Mr Hendriks.”
Although not going into details in open court, the judge agreed with the defence that Hendriks had a “most unfortunate” upbringing that likely contributed to his addiction issues. She reminded him repeatedly throughout the hearing of one particular aspect common in recovery programmes: making amends.
A donation to the surf lifesaving club in the form of emotional harm reparation might be as good for Hendriks’ recovery as it would be for the victimised organisation, she said, suggesting the defendant name a figure of how much he would be willing to pay. Hendriks suggested $3000, although his lawyer warned such a “noble gesture” might be too much for his limited means. The judge, however, accepted it as “an excellent offer”.
“It gives you an opportunity in some way, whatever your role might have been, to put right some wrongdoing you had some involvement in,” the judge said.
In addition to the $3000 payment, she ordered a sentence of 15 months’ intensive supervision, during which he must attend any recovery programmes directed by his probation officer.
“It seems that [recovery] is going very well for you. That is to your credit,” Tremewan added. “It does appear to me you’re trying to change things ... I’m confident that is what you want to do.
“It’s time to move forward.”
No one from the surf lifesaving club attended the sentencing this week, for good reason.
While Hendriks stood in the courtroom dock, officials and Piha community members affected by the burglary were instead at a much more uplifting function: the official opening of their new $8.6 million tower and clubhouse.
Ferguson, the organisation’s president, told the Herald this week the event was a reminder of just how amazing the community response has been throughout the rebuild process, but especially in the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle and the burglary.
Neighbouring surf lifesaving clubs lent a few radios each while permanent replacements were found. And people came out in droves to donate, insisting on giving money anyway even when they were told the club was insured so the financial loss was confined to the $2500 excess.
“It was very, very humbling that we received massive support from our community,” Ferguson said.
Although the clubhouse is now open, there’s still plenty of work to do. For instance, there are bunks but not yet mattresses and no dishes for the kitchen. And there is still about $150,000 that needs to be raised.
So while it doesn’t account for the $35,000 worth of radios that are still missing, Ferguson said the club would welcome the $3000 reparation.
Ferguson said he’d also be receptive to an apology letter to accompany the payment, something that was suggested by the judge but not required.
“As long as it’s genuine – it’s not just, ‘I never got a bike when I was 6′ and all that crap,” he said, adding that he remains baffled by the crime more than a year later. “I just can’t believe that people would do it – that’s the thing that just amazed me.”
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.
Judge: 'It's behaviour that is wrong and at your age, you should know better'.