Robert Richards (left) and Royden Haenga (R) have been found guilty of murdering Hori Gage (background, centre) while his partner and three children were in the back seat of their car on August 6, 2023. Composite photo / Jeremy Wilkinson
Robert Richards (left) and Royden Haenga (R) have been found guilty of murdering Hori Gage (background, centre) while his partner and three children were in the back seat of their car on August 6, 2023. Composite photo / Jeremy Wilkinson
Hori Gage was gunned down in his car, in front of his long-term partner and three of their children, in daylight, on his driveway on a Sunday afternoon.
Today, Royden Haenga and Robert Richards, both Black Power members, were found guilty of murdering him in what the Crown labelled “coldblood” in apparent retaliation for an incident days earlier when a local president of their gang had been stabbed and had his patch stolen.
Except Gage had nothing to do with that fight, and belonged to an entirely different chapter of the Mongrel Mob.
He’d been wearing a red jacket when Haenga and Richards drove past, armed with rifles and out for blood, the Crown claimed during two weeks of evidence in the High Court at Palmerston North.
When they spotted Gage, they turned around, stopped the car and got out. Haenga shot from beside the car door, while Richards advanced on the car, shooting as he went.
Police found six bullets in Gage’s body, five of which came from Richards’ gun, and one in his arm from Haenga’s rifle.
Afterwards, the killers returned to their car and sped off, before instructing three lower-ranking gang members to set it on fire and dispose of any evidence. Those three were charged and pleaded guilty to arson.
The jury didn’t buy that story and delivered guilty verdicts today for both Haenga and Richards after deliberating for just over 11 hours.
Robert Richards and Royden Haenga in the High Court at Palmerston North. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson
Neither Haenga nor Richards took the stand at the nearly three-week-long trial, and their lawyers didn’t call any witnesses.
However, Richards’ lawyer, William Hawkins, took aim at one of the main Crown witnesses, who initially lied to police about having driven Haenga and a man he later identified from a police photo-montage as Richards, from a Black Power house shortly before the shooting.
That witness, the only one to be given name suppression, then swapped places with Cunningham as the driver of the car shortly before the shooting.
In a police interview, the man initially lied about driving the car, but changed his story after he was played audio from a CCTV camera near Gage’s house, in which Gage’s partner and children could be heard screaming in the aftermath of the shooting.
Hawkins accused the witness of being in the car and said he was trying to cover up his involvement.
Haenga’s lawyer, Scott Jefferson, said his client had never intended to kill Gage and wanted only to intimidate him. He had been “shooting low” on purpose.
Jefferson said Haenga didn’t plan the murder, and that the person in the back seat of the car, alleged by the Crown to be Richards, acted alone and unscripted.
“There is a huge distinction between what Neihana Cunningham and Royden Haenga did and what the guy in the backseat did,” Jefferson said.
Hori Gage, 27, was fatally shot in front of his family. Photo / NZ Police
The Crown’s case was that Gage was killed in retaliation for the attack on the senior Black Power member days earlier, and that he’d simply been wearing a red jacket at the wrong place and wrong time when Haenga, Cunningham and Richards drove past.
Prosecutor Guy Carter said cellphone polling data placed Haenga at the Black Power address shortly before the murder, and CCTV footage identified his white Nissan Teana fleeing the scene after the shooting.
Further CCTV footage showed Richards in Palmerston North after having travelled from Hawke’s Bay with several associates, and he was identified as being the backseat passenger by the witness with name suppression.
Carter said the trial had been about holding the two shooters accountable.
“What they did does amount to an execution,” he said. “It was targeted, it was a callous, it was cold-blooded.”
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū, covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.
