The evening was going well with plenty of drinking and music but at about 11pm, things suddenly changed.
One of the people who lived at the house, patched Black Power member Teina Jareau Haddon, became angry and aggressive after others were referring to his nickname “Monster”.
Within moments a gun was out and the man was seriously injured after being shot in the chest.
But no one has been found accountable on violence charges after a jury acquitted Haddon, the alleged lead offender on a charge of attempted murder, and also found him not guilty of an alternative charge of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
Haddon, who was considered by the Crown to be a continuing risk to the public, has still gone to prison for two years and nine months after admitting a charge of unlawfully possessing a firearm, plus another of breaching the terms of his release from an earlier prison sentence.
He pleaded guilty to the firearms charge when arraigned at trial.
Justice Dale La Hood said in sentencing on Friday he could not ignore that the victim would not have been shot if Haddon hadn’t had the loaded and ready-to-fire pistol on him.
“I can’t ignore the consequences of the illegal possession and the victim being injured in a way he otherwise wouldn’t have,” Justice La Hood told the High Court at Nelson.
The defence argued it was accidental but the Crown said that could never be known.
Prosecutor Abigail Goodison said Haddon remained a “significant safety risk to the community” and needed to be sentenced on that basis.
Haddon, 35, Anthony Sutherland, 34, and Stevie Ann Alekna, 41, were all charged in the days following the gathering at a small house on the city fringe in late 2022.
Sutherland was sentenced to 12 months’ home detention on charges of unlawfully possessing a firearm and attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Alekna admitted a charge of being an accessory after the fact of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, but the plea was vacated and the charge was dismissed after Haddon’s acquittal.
The chance meeting in a liquor store
The victim and his partner had recently shifted to Nelson from Auckland.
Just before 7pm on December 30, 2022, they went to a liquor store to buy ice.
It was there they met Sutherland and his partner and struck up a conversation that led to the victim and his partner being invited to the house where Haddon was living at the time.
The evening progressed with everyone gathered in the lounge, drinking and listening to music.
At around 11pm, Haddon’s mood suddenly changed and he
pulled out a pistol with a black silencer from under the table and pointed it at the victim’s face, about a metre from him.
Justice La Hood said the fact the pistol was loaded and cocked made it “extremely dangerous”, alongside the fact Haddon was in a roomful of intoxicated people, two of whom were young.
With no warning, Haddon pulled the trigger, but it didn’t fire.
He immediately reloaded it, the victim panicked, grabbed the silencer and pushed the pistol nozzle away from his face.
Haddon pulled the trigger again and a bullet struck the victim in the left side of his chest.
The victim then ran outside and down the street, bleeding heavily, towards a nearby Warehouse store. Once there, he kicked the windows and yelled for help.
A worker rushed outside and called emergency services, the summary said.
The police administered first aid until an ambulance arrived and took the victim to hospital where he had emergency surgery to remove a fragment from a bullet that had pierced his lung and liver before being lodged near the middle of his back.
Haddon and others had by then fled the house.
The police investigate
In the days that followed, Sutherland was told he was going to have to “take the blame” for what happened because he had brought the victim to the address.
A police search of a nearby address revealed a rifle cut down to pistol size, but forensic testing showed it was not the weapon used by Haddon, even though the bullet fired from it compared with that removed from the victim.
A DNA sample from the grip matched Sutherland’s.
The police were focused on Haddon and soon went public with an appeal to his whereabouts, which included the distribution of his name and photo to the media and social media.
Police discovered he was being helped by others to avoid arrest which led to them delivering letters to known associates, warning they would be charged if found to be assisting Haddon.
Surveillance of Sutherland’s cellphone showed he was “clearly aware” Haddon was wanted for the shooting.
On January 10 last year, Sutherland went to the Nelson Police Station and said he had shot the victim after he had “pulled a firearm out of his pants”.
He claimed there had been a struggle, the shooting was accidental, and that “Monster” had not been present at the time.
Police said the statement was untrue and intended to help Haddon.
Three days later, Haddon was found at Alekna’s flat and attempted to flee via the back door, but was stopped by two officers and taken into custody.
Haddon poses a continued public risk
Goodison said Haddon was someone who “adhered to a code of loyalty” as being more important than the oath he had given in court, through his failure to disclose where he had put the illegal firearm.
She said the offending had occurred soon after he had served a “significant prison sentence” for violent offences.
Haddon’s lawyer Thomas Harre said it emphasised the need for offenders like him to have “robust, sensible release plans” which seemed not to have happened in this instance.
Sutherland’s “unenviable childhood” included deprivation, violence, trauma and exposure to drugs and alcohol from the age of 10 which meant he was predisposed to a serious drug problem.
They were factors in sentencing him to home detention, where he was able to live with his ailing mother.
Justice La Hood considered prison would be a backward step but warned Sutherland that any slip-up could see him behind bars instead.
