Two families wept for their boys in the High Court at Gisborne yesterday - one jailed for 20 months for the shooting death of the other in July last year.
The country's second-youngest killer stood in the dock next to his father and they held hands as both were sent to jail for their parts in the death of 11-year-old Triston Jermaine Papuni.
The 14-year-old boy was sentenced to 20 months in a youth justice facility after pleading guilty to manslaughter.
His father, 44, was jailed for two years for attempting to pervert the course of justice, after trying to cover up the killing.
Tears flowed in the public gallery as Justice Forrest Miller told the father and son there was no way they could escape prison terms.
The judge told the 14-year-old that while he might have accidently pulled the trigger, "everything you had done up until that point was deliberate".
"You used a rifle, an adult's toy, but it was a child's crime. One of quick and powerful anger over a trivial dispute.
"However, you differ from most because you were familiar with this particular rifle and what can happen. You should have handled it with more care, even if you were only 12 years old."
The boy was granted permanent name suppression. As a consequence his father cannot be named. He was just 12 years and 252 days old when he shot 11-year-old Triston on an East Coast farm.
Counsel for the boy, Phil Dreifuss, said at 12 the boy might have had the knowledge but not the maturity to understand what he was doing.
"It is not surprising that a firearm became the attention and focus of two boys who like hunting and the outdoors. These events would not have happened if they had had proper supervision that their age required."
Justice Miller spoke at length before granting the boy permanent name suppression.
"Clearly there is immense media and public interest . . . but this is not the same circumstance as Bailey Junior Kurariki. Without permanent name suppression, it is very unlikely the commercial media will respect your privacy and you do not have the maturity to handle that notoriety," he said.
Home detention in Gisborne was not a suitable option for the 14-year-old, who needed education and rehabilitation but was unlikely to get it in this district after outside media broke his name suppression.
There were no other offers of places to stay, which left him with few options, he said.
Justice Miller told the boy the starting point on the charge of manslaughter was five and half years but he was receiving a 70 percent discount because of his age, guilty plea and "genuine" remorse.
The father, red-eyed after hearing his son's sentencing and dressed in sports shorts and a T-shirt, was told his instinct to protect himself did him no credit.
"You failed as a parent by not securing that rifle and then by telling your son to lie.
"You left Triston's family to bury him with the belief he was responsible for his own death.
"Triston was in your care . . . your culpability is high. If that gun was secured the incident might never have happened."
Justice Miller gave the father a 20 percent sentence reduction because of his guilty plea, albeit a late one, and sentenced him to two years imprisonment.
"It would not be right to impose a more lenient sentence on you than on your son."
The boy was originally charged with murder and his father was originally charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact.
