A Hastings man found guilty of murdering Splash Planet security guard Hugh Mills has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 12 years.
Dennis Ronald Sandilands, aged 37, stood impassively in the High Court at Napier yesterday as Justice Warwick Gendall passed sentence on a man he described as a professional burglar and incorrigible thief.
Sandilands was found guilty of murdering Mr Mills, 49, a father of six, overnight on October 30 last year during a crime spree at the Hastings water-theme park.
He has 56 convictions for crimes such as aggravated robbery and assaults on police.
Mr Mills' widow, Diane, was not present for the sentencing but one of Mr Mills' brothers was.
Mrs Mills had sat through every day of the trial with one or two of her children as she heard how her husband died.
Sandilands had already admitted burgling the Splash Planet administration building and setting fire to it.
He beat Mr Mills to death with a batten from a trellis at the park.
Justice Gendall said he had to consider whether Mr Mills' death reached the threshold of "sufficiently serious" set by Parliament last year to justify more than the minimum sentence of 10 years.
Sandilands had used extraordinary brutality with multiple blows to Mr Mills' head, causing five fractures to his face and skull.
"So severe were Mr Mills' injuries that his family was advised not to see his body."
The judge said Mr Mills' death was a senseless slaying so Sandilands could save his skin.
The burglary continued for at least 60 minutes after the attack as he moved around the body of his victim. He went on torch the administration building to destroy evidence of what he had done.
It was a mindless, brutal and sustained attack sufficient to justify more than the minimum 10 years of a life sentence.
Prosecutor Graham Lang said yesterday that Sandilands had shown callous indifference to Mr Mills by making several trips past his body to carry booty to the fence of the park.
He rifled his pockets and took his belt, which he used to carry a knife he had stolen. .
Defence lawyer Russell Fairbrother said Sandilands felt abject despair at the consequences of his actions that night but maintained that he never intended to kill Mr Mills.
"The matter has consumed him since."
During the trial Mr Lang told the jury of seven men and four women that Mr Mills interrupted Sandilands when he was burgling the park's safe.
Pathologist Dr Jane Vuletic said one fracture along the base of Mr Mills' skull made death inevitable.
He had a compound fracture of his right cheekbone and there was another depressed, fragmented fracture across his forehead into the right side of his head.
Mr Fairbrother said Sandilands was so tightly in the grip of a bipolar affective disorder at the time that he was incapable of forming the intent to kill Mr Mills.
Two of Sandilands' sisters gave evidence that they were so concerned about his behaviour in the weeks before the killing that they wrote a five-page letter to Hastings police asking for him to be taken into protective custody. One said he was as mad as a meat axe.
But according to the sisters the appeal went unheard.
- NZPA
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