Six jailed for Jhia's death

The man who fatally shot Jhia Te Tua and the man who told him to fire a high-powered rifle at the house where the 2-year-old lived will spend at least 15 years behind bars.
The sentencing of Hayden John Wallace and Karl Unuka Check, along with four other men involved in the toddler's death, brings the investigation to an end, almost two years after she was murdered.
Justice Warwick Gendall yesterday told the Wellington High Court the remorse Wallace and Check, both 27, had shown for their actions was not genuine and they were only trying to engineer a more lenient sentence.
On May 5 2007, Check handed Wallace a gun and told him to "shoot [Black Power members] in the head" before a three-car Mongrel Mob convoy drove to Puriri St in Wanganui and Wallace fired a volley of shots at the house Jhia shared with her parents.
Justice Gendall said Wallace, who had 48 previous convictions, had concocted an alibi in his defence that the jury clearly rejected as a lie.
Check, a patched Mongrel Mob member, was the "prime mover" in the affair and was likely to reoffend, Justice Gendall said.
"You were the leader of the mob on this day and, whatever your hierarchy within the Mongrel Mob, that does not in any way lessen your responsibility."
Ranji Tane Forbes, 22, who drove Wallace in the lead car was sentenced to a minimum non-parole period of 12-and-a-half years.
He was on bail at the time of the shooting, but Justice Gendall said Forbes was sincere in his remorse.
"You are not a gang member and not committed to a life of crime.
"You were then aged 20 and did show some acknowledgment and responsibility in your interview with the police."
All three men had pleaded not guilty to murder before being convicted after a five-week trial last December.
Godfrey Thomas Muraahi, 28, and Erueti Chase Nahona, 20, will both spend at least six years in jail after pleading guilty to manslaughter in the last week of the trial. Both men are patched Mongrel Mob members and rode in the rear car in the convoy on the night Jhia was killed.
Muraahi received a sentence of 10 years and six months, and Nahona 10 years and three months.
Richard Anthony Puohotaua, 28, was sentenced to three years in jail after being found guilty of participation in an organised criminal group, a charge that was built into the sentence of the other five offenders.
Justice Gendall said the death of an innocent was the inevitable outcome of open gang warfare that occurred in Wanganui from late 2006 to mid-2007.
"It's difficult for sensible members of the community to fathom," he told the court.
"Their members and leadership believe they have some form of territorial control over their community or aspects of it. Revenge was always on their minds."
He said gangs were a problem shared by all New Zealanders, not just Wanganui residents, and a strong response was needed from both the courts and Parliament.
"You are being held to account for the victim, the family, the community of Wanganui and the wider community of New Zealand, whose streets, especially in Wanganui, you made into dangerous battle grounds."
12 men have now been jailed for their role in Jhia's death.
PICTURED: The six men jailed yesterday ... (from left) Richard Puohotaua, Erueti Nahona, Godfrey Muraahi, Ranji Forbes, Karl Check and Hayden Wallace.