Carlos Harris. Photo / Michael Craig
Warning: This includes descriptions of extreme violence and torture
Kidnapping victim Kayla Pawa was tortured with a blowtorch, beaten with a baseball bat and instructed to dig her own grave during her nearly month-long gang abduction last year.
Today one of the men responsible for her suffering, Carlos Harris, has been sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, with a mandatory prison term of four years.
During the abduction, Pawa was kept at a series of secret locations across Auckland and Northland and subjected to violence in the hope she would be persuaded either through fear or force to show them how to raid her partner’s online cryptocurrency stash.
Harris, otherwise known as C-los Duzit, has been in custody since he turned himself in after being the subject of a high-profile manhunt last July following Pawa’s escape from a car boot in Tikipunga, Whangārei. He pleaded guilty to one kidnapping charge earlier this year.
The charge carries a maximum penalty of 14 years’ imprisonment.
Harris’s lawyer Emma Priest told the court her client accepted he undertook a key role in the offending and would have to live with it for the rest of his life.
He is committed to rehabilitation, she said, referring to him leaving the Nomads gang and suffering the “consequences” that come with that.
Priest submitted her client should have a sentence starting point of 12 years and receive a 50% reduction for his guilty plea, remorse, steps to rehabilitation, the impact imprisonment would have on his children and his own childhood experience.
The prosecution proposed a starting sentence of 13 years, with a minimum period of imprisonment (MPI) of three-and-a-half years.
Priest argued no minimum should be imposed.
In response to this request, Judge Brooke Gibson said, “If you couldn’t impose an MPI for criminality like this, when could you impose an MPI?”.
Priest said an MPI would be indicated in cases where a person was found guilty at trial, didn’t take responsibility, had previously been to prison, was a recidivist violent offender who had refused to rehabilitation, or had done it to no effect.
Judge Gibson stated it was likely the worst kidnapping seen in Auckland in years.
While the victim had no permanent physical injuries, he said she was kept in a state of terror for weeks while receiving “periodic beatings”.
“[It] goes without saying the trauma she suffered will be with her for a very long period of time, something [Harris] yourself acknowledge.”
Judge Gibson accepted Harris was remorseful and that Harris said he had left the gang and, “suffered a beating as a result of doing so”.
Ultimately the judge said his approach will be to take a step back, look at the offending and see if the sentence fits the overall criminality involved.
He began with a sentence starting point of 13-and-a-half years and granted him a 40% discount, resulting in a final sentence of eight years.
Judge Gibson also imposed a four-year minimum period of imprisonment.
On Friday, June 9, 2023, a number of men came into Pawa and her boyfriend Leslie Naidoo’s Birkenhead home to speak about obtaining money.
Pawa assisted the males with how Binance - an online cryptocurrency exchange - and digital wallets worked.
The men eventually left, but told the pair they would return, which they did three days later.
According to court documents provided to the Herald, Harris was spotted on CCTV footage on the night of June 12 driving in a convoy towards the home.
Shortly after Harris and a group of men entered the home and Pawa’s bedroom with a gun and wearing balaclavas.
Pawa was told she would be shot if she screamed, the documents said.
One of the men walked around Pawa’s room asking “Where is it”, in regard to the money.
The man holding Pawa was then alleged to have gestured towards her boyfriend, Leslie Naidoo, and gave the man holding the gun a brusque instruction: “Finish him.”
“The male with the gun remained while the other males took Ms Pawa downstairs,” the summary of facts states. “The male with the gun told Mr Naidoo to take off his shirt and lie down on the bed. He wrapped a pillow around the gun and told Mr Naidoo he would shoot [him].
Naidoo was terrified and pleaded with the man not to shoot.
“After a short period, the male ran from the room and also left the house.”
Pawa’s ordeal, however, was not over and the men forced her into one of the cars parked outside.
“She screamed and said she did not have their money, but the males told her to ‘shut up’ and that she was coming with them,” the summary said.
From there authorities allege Pawa was taken to a Glen Eden home and blindfolded in a garage.
“Her kidnappers tied her to a chair with a shower curtain or sheet laid on the ground,” documents state. “There were a large number of people, both males and females, present. They told Ms Pawa to give back their money.”
After Pawa said she was unable to provide any money she was told to pick a finger to be cut off the following morning at 7am.
“Can u get some plyers [sic] please ... something that will cut a finger off?” Harris was texted at 6.37am.
The amputation did not eventuate but she was assaulted by multiple people, including with a baseball bat on her ribs by a woman and a hammer to her hands by a number of men.
She did attempt to escape but was caught and told not to run or she would be killed.
A few days later she was shifted to Harris’s address and kept there for two weeks, the majority of which she was locked in a bathroom.
Harris’ children were also present at his home while Pawa was held there.
“At one point, her kidnappers took her clothes and deprived her of any food for a period of approximately five days, after she was unable to transfer cryptocurrency to them. Ms Pawa kept warm [by] filling up empty shampoo bottles she found in the bathroom with hot water,” the documents said.
The court documents said at least three significant assaults occurred at his address.
On one occasion she was beaten unconscious and then threatened with having an entire limb amputated.
During another assault two people held her down while a third person lit a blowtorch, waving it over her legs and face and threatening to “burn her eyeballs out”. The threat wasn’t carried out but the flame was close enough to singe her hair and eyebrows, she later recounted.
The victim was eventually shoved in the boot of a vehicle - warned beforehand that if she screamed she would be shot - and driven to an abandoned house in a rural area of Kohukohu, in the Far North.
“While there, she was told that one of the males had dug a hole for her grave,” the court documents state. “Ms Pawa was made to help with the digging.”
Police were only alerted to her disappearance on June 27, two weeks after her partner had watched the convoy speed away from his home.
After obtaining her Google account information, police tracked her IP address to the first West Auckland home she had been held in. They also quickly realised Harris’ home was a location of interest.
Dual search warrants were executed at both homes around 3am on July 4, but Pawa had long since been removed.
Harris wasn’t home at the time of the search but a series of text messages just hours later indicated he was aware of it and was getting nervous.
“Tell the bro ger rid of lapy,” he instructed one person, referring to a laptop
“I’m sketching out now,” he texted another person, adding minutes later: “I’m TRIPPING.”
At some point before July 6, Pawa was moved into the boot of a Volkswagen that was alarmed to notify her kidnappers if she tried to escape.
On July 6 she realised the alarm appeared to be off and she was subsequently able to escape and flag down an ambulance.
Several others have been charged in relation to the offending and are also due to appear before the court.
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Katie Harris is an Auckland-based journalist who covers issues including sexual assault, workplace misconduct, media, crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2020.
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