Rotorua's high-profile court cases in 2024. Photos / Andrew Warner
The Rotorua Daily Post covered more than 100 court cases throughout 2024 in the Rotorua District Court, High Court and through the New Zealand Parole Board.
They include the inside story of an illegally run prostitution ring using teens as young as 13, and gang clashes including a daylight intersection shooting, a stolen patch that turned into a dangerous car chase and the slashing of the legs of a man who wore red shoes.
Kelly Makiha takes a look at some of Rotorua’s high-profile criminal cases in 2024.
Rotorua chapters of the Mongrel Mob and Black Power are no strangers to stoushes, but in 2024, the cases of some of the most violent attacks in Rotorua’s history reached conclusions in the local courtrooms.
Ben Tihi, 30, was sentenced to five years and five months' jail after he took a machete from one of his Black Power mates and swung it at a man wearing red shoes, slicing the man’s leg to the bone and badly cutting his other ankle.
As the man lay nearly bleeding to death outside a Rotorua home, Tihi and his group stripped the man of his shoes and took them as a “trophy”.
Tihi’s actions on that day, October 11, 2023, were described in a courtroom as a “cowardly” daylight gang attack committed by Black Power-affiliated men.
Tihi, a 30-year-old patched member of the Black Power Outbackz group, appeared in the Rotorua District Court for sentencing before Judge Anna Skellern in July 2024 last year after pleading guilty to a charge of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
Just a few hundred metres up the road, another gang attack generated headlines. On September 19, 2023, Black Power-connected teen Himiona Buffett was driving a car from which someone with a pistol opened fire on two utes five times. The utes were occupied by Mongrel Mob members at the Westend traffic lights, on the corner of Malfroy and Old Taupō Rds.
The shots shattered a rear window of one of the utes and another bullet travelled through an open window of a member of the public’s car parked at the lights, with the bullet lodging in the vehicle’s interior lining. One of the utes reversed, smashing into the shooter’s vehicle, and their vehicle spun out.
The shooter, a teen who has name suppression, has admitted his role but went on the run and failed to turn up to his sentencing in September 2024.
Buffett, on the other hand, impressed Judge Joanne Wickcliffe with his solid attempt to turn his life around since his arrest. The judge decided to keep him out of jail, instead sentencing him to nine months’ community detention.
Judge Wickliffe noted Buffett was once a young teen with a promising overseas sporting career, but it fell away when Covid struck and he lost his sense of belonging – instead finding it within the Black Power.
In sentencing him, she said: “Clearly, you have a lot of potential and you still do.”
Over King’s Birthday weekend in 2023, a stolen gang patch had rival gang members chasing one another dangerously and at high speed on Rotorua’s Te Ngae Rd in what a judge described as “wanton lawlessness”.
Mongrel Mob gang members, including Daryll Lay, were hot on Wharekite Te Runa’s tail because he and his Black Power mates had just stolen one of their gang patches.
For 4km, the two gang vehicles weaved in and out of traffic, at times driving on the wrong side of the road during the busy long-weekend traffic about 6pm.
Within minutes, the chase ended in a cascade of crashes that left six people injured – three of them innocent members of the public – and four cars smashed, as well as a broken pole. Despite the casualties, the drivers of the offending vehicles did not stop stopped to help and instead continued to chase one another up Tarawera Rd.
Te Runa, 26, was sentenced in 2024 in the Rotorua District Court to two years, three months and 15 days’ imprisonment and was disqualified from obtaining or holding a driver’s licence for two years and six months. Lay was jailed for 19 months.
It was a case that shocked residents – girls as young as 13 and 14 were being groomed into prostitution by a Rotorua man who would ply them with hard drugs and alcohol.
Clayton Fox, 49, of Rotorua, was the pimp and ran the operation alongside his girlfriend, Wikitoria Pepene.
There was a third person involved, Darby Bronson Whareaorere, 29, of Rotorua, but his case was never heard in the Rotorua District Court because he died in prison on April 29, 2024. His death has been referred to the coroner.
Whareaorere’s charges included assisting a minor in providing commercial sexual services and receiving a cash payment he knew was derived from commercial sexual services provided by a minor.
Fox was jailed on 18 charges for eight years and five months and Pepene was jailed for three months.
Others, too, were implicated – customers.
In November, the Rotorua Daily Post revealed the names of the five men who pleaded guilty to a charge of contracting a 13-year-old for sexual services.
The men are Shubham Choudhary, 27, of Hamilton; Felise Falanai, 31, a labourer from Rotorua; Nishanth Parakudiyil Prahladan, 23, of Tauranga; Stephen James Philpott, 42, a heavy tanker driver from Rotorua; and Stephen Graham Shaw, 70, a farmer from Ngākuru.
They will be sentenced in February 2025.
Three other men have pleaded not guilty and will stand trial in 2025.
Two men had their charges dismissed and another Rotorua man, who was also charged with contracting a 13-year-old for sex, also died before his case was heard in court. His death has also been referred to the coroner.
In March, the Rotorua Daily Post reported on one of the girls caught up in Fox and Pepene’s web.
The young woman had been groomed and indecently assaulted by Fox.
In 2024, the Rotorua Daily Post brought coverage of a New Zealand Parole Board hearing into one of the country’s most infamous killers.
Whetu Te Hiko killed Tokoroa primary school teacher Lois Dear inside her classroom more than 18 years ago. Dear, an adored 66-year-old teacher, had gone into her class early on a Sunday morning to prepare her lessons when Te Hiko, who was still drunk after attending a party the night before, tried to steal her car.
She called out to Te Hiko she was going to call police and he responded by confronting her in the classroom, suffocating her with a sweatshirt before leaving her dead body in the classroom. It was revealed at Te Hiko’s sentencing Dear was found in a position that indicated there had also been sexual offending.
Despite being eligible for parole for the first time, Te Hiko told the Parole Board he didn’t want to leave jail. He said his heart felt rotten, he was “scum”, he hated himself and was “happy to die” in prison.
He said he needed to “sit with the hurt” for longer to respect the pain he inflicted on Dear’s family when he was a 23-year-old.
It was the first time Te Hiko had spoken in a publicly reported setting about why he did what he did.
He said there were things in his head he couldn’t get over, including “raw anger” towards some of his family members.
“Who was I supposed to talk to? I didn’t have anyone to talk to. I thought drugs and alcohol were the answer, but [they weren’t].”
He said he had roamed the streets near Strathmore School all his life and he had never thought of killing someone.
“And I did. And it tears me apart every day.”
When asked by a Parole Board member if there was more than just alcohol in his system making him make bad choices, Te Hiko replied in the affirmative.
“There are heaps of demons in there, sir. They were just loud in my head.”
He will go before the Parole Board again in July 2026.
Kelly Makiha is a senior journalist who has reported for the Rotorua Daily Post for more than 25 years, covering mainly police, court, human interest and social issues.
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