Sione Tupoumalohi sentenced for year-long stabbing spree inside Auckland prisons

• Sione Tupoumalohi, 29, received six additional years for a year-long stabbing spree in prison.
• Justice Rebecca Edwards noted Tupoumalohi’s disturbing behaviour but acknowledged his recent positive progress and treatment.
• Tupoumalohi’s sentence will be served consecutively with previous sentences, totalling more than 15 years.

A violent offender who has been in and out of adult prisons since the age of 13 will now have six years added to his existing sentences after pleading guilty to a year-long stabbing spree behind bars.

Sione Tupoumalohi, 29, is now housed in the Prisoners of Extreme Risk Unit (PERU) at Auckland Prison in Paremoremo - the nation’s only maximum security facility - following the four separate attacks.

But despite his undisputedly disturbing behaviour - which left one victim with a collapsed lung and swollen brain - there was an unusually hopeful tone as he appeared in the High Court at Auckland today, clutching a rainbow-coloured fidget as he sat in the dock next to a communications assistant.

“These attacks were vicious and you showed no mercy,” Justice Rebecca Edwards said, adding that people needed to be protected from him. “A repeated pattern of offending requires a stern response.”

But the sentencing marked the first time in Tupoumalohi’s long criminal history that he had a diagnosis and treatment plan in place for a series of life setbacks including foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, a mild intellectual disability, a traumatic brain injury, likely ADHD and anxiety, the judge also noted. Since he has been moved to PERU and started receiving specialised treatment, two corrections officers have described him as one of their favourite prisoners due to his positive attitude and immense progress in such a short period.

“Hope needs to be kept alive,” the judge said, declining to impose a minimum term of imprisonment or uplift the sentence due to his lengthy criminal history.

Regardless of those mercies, he has a long road ahead and is unlikely to see the outside of a prison anytime soon, she added.

Exercise yard attacks

Tupoumalohi was housed in the lower security Juliet unit at Auckland’s Mt Eden Prison when the first attack occurred in June 2021.

Tupoumalohi and four co-defendants were in the exercise yard when one of the co-defendants and the victim agreed to a one-on-one fight to settle a disagreement, according to the agreed summary of facts for the case. But as the fight progressed, Tupoumalohi and others jumped in.

While others kicked and punched the victim, Tupoumalohi pulled out a shank - a makeshift knife common in prisons - and stabbed him 14 times. After the attack, the victim collapsed in the yard and the shank was secreted away by another prisoner, court documents state.

Sione Tupoumalohi has been in and out of prison since age 13, a High Court judge was told as his existing sentence was lengthen by six years to reflect four stabbings while in prison.

“The defendants ignored [the victim] as he remained slumped in a corner,” documents state. “They continued to exercise without providing any aid or care...”

The victim was later hospitalised with a collapsed lung, brain swelling, a lacerated left ear, gashes to his head and punctures to his neck, shoulders and back.

The next attack occurred six months later, in Dec 2021, after the defendant had been transferred to Auckland Prison. It again involved a fight in the exercise yard that Tupoumalohi did not start, but he quickly jumped in to help outnumber and overpower the victim when the violence began.

After kicking the victim in the face, and as a co-defendant repeatedly stomped on the victim’s head, Tupoumalohi stabbed him an estimated 33 times over the course of less than 40 seconds. The victim needed stitches for a large wound to his head, as well as cuts to his hand and neck.

Just one month later, Tupoumalohi was in the yard laughing with his soon-to-be next victim when a co-defendant approached from behind and punched the other man. This time, Tupoumalohi stabbed an estimated 30 times - causing superficial head wounds, wounds on his forearm and hand that required stitches and a wound under his eyelid that required surgery.

The final attack took place in April 2022, again in the exercise yard, as Tupoumalohi walked with the victim before joining others in another vicious attack.

“Mr Tupoumalohi retrieved a sharpened weapon from under his sweatshirt and stabbed at [the victim] in the upper region of his body many times,” documents state, explaining that the victim curled into a ball in an attempt to protect himself. “Mr Tupoumalohi held [his] head with his left hand, while he continued to stab with his right hand.

“...Mr Tupoumalohi continued to stab ... before he kicked him once in the head and ... flushed his sharpened weapon down the toilet.”

In addition to superficial cuts to his scalp, head, and upper arms, the victim required stitches for two wounds to his hand and head.

All of the attacks were caught on CCTV.

Tupoumalohi was charged with four counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, which carries a sentence of up to 14 years’ imprisonment.

‘Caged’

Tupoumalohi pleaded guilty to the charges before district court judges last December and in April, but the cases were referred to the High Court for sentencing after a judge determined he might be eligible for a rare preventative detention sentence. In the end, however, the Crown opted not to pursue the sentencing option, which would have resulted in a sentence with no end date.

While his capacity for violence made for an immensely sad case, so did his background of previously untreated trauma and disabilities, prosecutor Henry Steele acknowledged today.

He suggested a starting point of 16 years, with 45% in credits to be applied for Tupoumalohi’s personal circumstances and guilty pleas. Defence lawyer Emma Priest sought a starting point of 12-14 years, with steeper credits resulting in an end sentence of five years’ imprisonment.

“I think it’s important to recognise the environment of men who are caged, who are trapped with other dangerous men, and the realities that brings,” Priest said, adding that her client’s issues have meant that he was more easily manipulated by others.

She described her client as someone who has spent most of his life in jail, starting at age 13 when he was placed in a Tongan prison while living with extended family overseas. Since then, he has spent no more than a year at a time outside prison and has “really fallen through the cracks”, she said, explaining that up until now he was given very little exposure to rehabilitative programmes.

But, she added, “there’s some real hope here”. For nearly two years he’s had “exemplary behaviour” and has seen a “quite extraordinary turnaround”, she said.

She described the high-security PERU unit as “incredibly restrictive and punitive” but as having given her client the stability to focus on improving himself.

‘You were not safe’

Justice Edwards agreed Tupoumalohi didn’t have a great start to life, a setback that was exacerbated by his untreated impairments.

“You were not safe as a child at home,” she said. “Violence surrounded you from a very early age.

“... You use violence because this is all you’ve ever known and you find it hard to stop and think.”

Tupoumalohi will have to serve the six-year sentence consecutively with his already stacked previous sentences - five years and five months imposed in April 2022 and three years and nine months in October 2022 for wounding, assault with intent to rob and aggravated robbery.

The best way to protect the community, she said, would be to let him continue to receive “the correct support and medical assistance that you need” while earning his way first out of the PERU unit and eventually on to parole.

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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