'Lovely, young lad didn't deserve to die'

Kaine Lewis liked to wear certain colours - but his family doesn't believe he should have died for that.
The 17-year-old was killed on Saturday in Murupara, in what is being investigated as a gang-related attack.
Kaine lived in Kaingaroa and worked as a general hand for his uncle, Kevin Lewis - managing director of the KLC wood processing plant that sits beside the forestry village.
He had had his troubles, his uncle said, but he had done nothing that he deserved to die for.
"People thought he was part of a gang because he wore colours that a gang wore," Mr Lewis told The Daily Post.
"He wore them because he liked the colour. He was naive enough to think he could do that. He should have been able to do that without what's happened to him."
Kaine was in Murupara on Friday night for a party. Mr Lewis said the teen's father told him not to go.
"It sounds like Kaine got into conflict earlier that night. But who knows? Maybe the group attacked him, maybe it was their last initiation to become part of that group."
Mr Lewis heard from staff that Kaine had been involved in something. By 8.30am on Saturday, he knew his nephew was dead. Kaine's mother, Dorothy Lewis, and Kaine's father, Ian Lewis, were told by police to go to Rotorua Hospital, not knowing how serious the situation was. The teen died of head injuries.
Kaine's funeral was held in Kaingaroa on Tuesday. It included the hymn Whakaaria Mai and a tribute from kaumatua Pita Biddle. Mr Biddle had taken Kaine under his wing when he moved out of his grandmother's home and into a nearby flat about a month ago.
Kaine had lived with his paternal grandmother for most of his life. Mr Lewis said Kaine's mother wasn't around, but his father had always lived close by. They had recently started becoming more like friends and had gone on hunting trips together.
Kaine left Reporoa College without any qualifications and, in May last year, Mr Lewis employed the teen after being approached by his parents. "He was a tall lad, not physically big, but tall. He had been kept under my mother's wing and she's a staunch, strict lady. Kaine wasn't academic, he wasn't really that smart.
"I would call him unworldly, very naive about the world around him. He had been kept quite closeted from the community out there. He'd got into the wrong crowd. He was very impressionable. He did well at work, but he was conflicted."
Mr Lewis said that if you asked anybody associated with Kaine, they thought he was a lovely, young lad. "He was a nice kid. He thought he was, as most young guys do, bulletproof."
The Lewis family were due to take part in this morning's March For Life, organised by Murupara principal Pem Bird in the wake of Kaine's murder. The march is for Murupara residents to show they support a safe community and that they want to reclaim their town from the clutches of gangs.
"All the family are hoping that something positive comes out of it, that his death is a catalyst for something better in terms of initiatives towards trying to sort out these issues."
Mr Lewis said Kaine was a young man who had "made some mistakes and still had plenty more to make".
"That's how we grow. He most probably made a major mistake being where he was, but should he be killed for it?
"No. He was trying to find his own way in life. We could see something going to happen but we didn't expect this."
* March for slain teen - p5