Gough, 24, and Rhind, 32, defended a charge of aggravated robbery from the August 16, 2021 incident, but a jury found them guilty and they were this week jailed for their roles.
Gough also earlier admitted a charge of assaulting a prison officer on September 7 last year.
A key issue for Judge Tini Clark to decide during sentencing in the Hamilton District Court today was whether the “gun-like or pipe object” pointed at the flatmates was a firearm.
She said she couldn’t be sure that it was but accepted it had “the appearance” of a sawn-off shotgun.
Rhind, who was on an electronically monitored sentence at the time, and Gough were seen together the day before, the day of, and the day after the armed robbery, along with being connected to a white ute that was used.
One of the flatmates, who was asleep at the time of the break-in, woke to find somebody in his bedroom.
The house had CCTV cameras set up, covering the front door and a window but not all entry points.
Judge Clark said there was only evidence of two offenders clambering in through a window and it remained unclear how the other two got inside.
“Two of those people appeared to be brandishing weapons - knives - and also a gun-like or pipe object.”
While being held in the room, the group threatened to “shoot up the house”, she said.
Rhind’s counsel Charles Bean said his client had already spent two years and two months in custody and pushed for a starting point of four years in jail term.
Rhind had been busy while in prison completing courses, and authoring a 10-page safety release plan.
He’d also been accepted into the Tai Aroha rehabilitative programme if he got a sentence low enough to qualify for home detention.
“He’s doing his best to move forward and... there’s a genuine mood for change.”
Judge Clark told Gough’s lawyer Gerard Walsh she got mixed messages about whether his client was remorseful or not.
When he was asked what the impact on the victims would have been by a probation report writer, Gough replied, “probably not very good”.
He also still maintained he was wrongfully convicted.
Walsh simply said that his client was keen to “change and reform”.
Judge Clark regarded the offending as pre-meditated and serious due to the use of weapons and using them to detain the occupants in a bedroom.
For Rhind, she noted he had done the Tai Aroha course previously and it was “not as successful as it could have been” but now, prison couldn’t be avoided.
She also took aim at him offending while wearing an e-bracelet, describing it as “foolish”.
She gave discounts for his upbringing, which saw him introduced to alcohol and drugs at 11, by which time he’d left school.
He was put into State care at 13, and was a fully-fledged Black Power member by the time he was 24.
Rhind was jailed for five years.
Gough was brought up in a gang environment and began using drugs at 6, alcohol at 8, and took on the responsibility of looking after his siblings at 11.
Judge Clark accepted that he had been caught up in a cycle of incarceration “for some years” but she couldn’t help but “feel a sense of waste because of the potential that you may have had.
“You have both been significantly disadvantaged which is why I’m willing to allow for a significant discount to recognise the inevitability really of where you have now ended up... [but] your background doesn’t define your future.”
She jailed Gough for five years and four months.
Despite acknowledging the harm and loss caused, Judge Clark declined to issue a reparation order, stating it “wasn’t realistic”.
She did, however, remit Rhind’s $2002 worth of fines, along with Gough’s $330.
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for eight years and has been a journalist for 19.
