Another soft judge has given a dangerous criminal a pathetic slap on the wrist with less than three years jail time for the most heinous of road safety negligence.
This Gisborne driver’s road safety crimes include: drunk driving, dangerous driving, speeding to evade a Police stop, allowing an unrestrained child in a car, and causing an involving 6 seriously injured people, And this was while in bail for assault, escaping custody, threatening behavior and twice failing to appear in court. He crashed head-on into an innocent family who have been emotionally and financially devastated, and one of his own passengers was flung through the windscreen of the speeding car. The maximum sentence for the driving offences alone is 5 years, plus potentially similar punishment for the pre-existing offences. Despite that a miserly 2yrs 11 months was deemed ‘appropriate’.
The potential penalties for a serious health & safety accident in a workplace is $1,000,000 AND 5 years jail, and the ‘workplace’ includes a company car so encompasses road safety. But similar devastation on our roads caused by an individual driver who is drunk, is let off with a with a slap for the most blatant and willful road safety breaches.
Crash Management sees the results of these ‘road accidents’ every day and work with our business fleet clients to raise awareness of driver health & safety, use strategies to reduce crashes, and keep drivers safe when they do happen. We’re not happy about this latest farcical case, and we believe stronger penalties are needed to help the safe driving message through to private motorists as well as company vehicle drivers.
The Gisborne case makes sad reading but is a must at http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11810673. We also reprint here for your convenience.
A driver who sped past police, refused to stop and crashed head-on into an oncoming vehicle near Te Karaka last Easter has been jailed.
All seven occupants of both vehicles were seriously injured, including driver Tyson Maxwell Matenga, 27, and his 4-year-old son who was asleep, unrestrained, on the back seat.
A passenger in the rear seat of Matenga’s vehicle was flung through the windscreen – breaking every major bone in her body.
In the oncoming vehicle, Rock Pere, 39, was travelling with his two daughters, aged 19 and 8, to Gisborne to visit family. Pere was so badly injured, he has been on ACC ever since and is unlikely to ever return to his career in construction.
Matenga was sentenced in Gisborne District Court by Judge Warren Cathcart, who jailed him for two years, 11 months and disqualified him from driving for three years.
He pleaded guilty to six charges of reckless use causing injury – an offence punishable by up to five years imprisonment.
Also covered by the sentence were unrelated offences, many while on bail, of assault, escaping custody, threatening behaviour and twice failing to attend court.
But the crash was “without doubt” the most serious, Judge Cathcart said.
On March 25 last year, Matenga was driving north on Matawai Rd towards Te Karaka in drizzly wet conditions. The traffic flow had started to build for the long weekend.
He had three passengers on board – his brother Mathew Puhipuhi aka Matenga, sister-in-law Nikisha Green, and young son Rioss Smith-Matenga.
Detected speeding by an unmarked police vehicle on the road ahead, Matenga refused to stop, “arrogantly” speeding past the patrol car which clocked him travelling at 136km/h near McMillan and Poynter Rds, the judge said.
He continued at high speed, lost control at a moderate 75km/h bend near Pitcher Rd and crossed the centre line.
An oncoming car was driven by Pere’s 19-year-old daughter Varshan, who had recently passed her driver licence and was getting some open road experience, with her father in the passenger seat beside her.
Seeing Matenga’s car reeling out of control towards them, Pere grabbed the steering wheel and tried to evade a crash. But the vehicles hit head-on, just off centre.
They crushed as much as possible on initial impact, then separated and rotated away in opposite directions before impacting again.
Matenga’s sister-in-law Green was flung from the rear of his car through the windscreen and was caught on the outside of one of the vehicles, before hitting the ground. Her legs, arms, and wrists were broken, along with her pelvis, collarbone and a clavicle.
She suffered a punctured lung, broken eye sockets, jaw, nose, cheekbone and teeth.
Pere tried to get out and help his daughters but collapsed due to his injuries.
The girls were removed later from the vehicle by emergency services.
Matenga, his son and his brother all had to be cut from the wreckage.
Everyone needed hospital treatment.
In a victim impact statement he read to the court, Pere said the other car came out of nowhere.
He suffered a fractured left knee, fractured right foot, several fractures to his sternum, broken ribs, a collapsed left lung, blood clots to his right lung, a broken right wrist and scaphoid.
His wrist was so badly damaged his surgeon told him he would not work as a builder again. Building was his passion.
That news was devastating, Pere said.
He transferred to North Shore Hospital after eight days in Gisborne Hospital’s intensive care unit and had a six-hour surgery. He was an inpatient for three months.
He went home in a wheelchair. He needed help with basic self-care including having others wipe his backside, Pere said. It was humbling and embarrassing. His pain at times was unbearable.
He had been subject to MRIs, counselling, poked and prodded, humiliated, taken large amounts of medication, had huge mood swings and often felt depressed.
He had been the sole income earner for his family, which suffered great financial loss. ACC only paid to settle his wages. His partner had to fly to Gisborne and stay in the city after the accident.
In Auckland, she had to borrow cars to visit him in hospital where parking was expensive.
His youngest daughter Golaka was still severely traumatised, fearful of travelling in cars, found it hard to get to sleep, and woke at nights screaming.
Her little body took such a thrashing, she was still in ongoing pain and receiving treatment, Pere said.
The incident had also traumatised him, Pere said. He found it hard to move forward. He had so much anger.
He had been taking his girls on a holiday doing everything right. When his girls needed him, he was unable to be there for them.
They wanted him to forgive Matenga but found it hard. Matenga had never contacted them.
“We became victims when we were doing everything right. I feel there is no justice,” Pere said.
Sentencing Matenga for the driving and unrelated offences, Judge Cathcart set a starting point at 40 months imprisonment.
There was a four-month uplift to mark Matenga’s bail status during some of the offending and for his previous relevant convictions for other driving and violent offending.
Pleas in mitigation put by counsel Leighvi Maynard earned Matenga a four-month discount. But the judge questioned the extent to which submissions could be taken into account.
Letter writers told the court Matenga was a good father, yet he had put his son at risk with his arrogant behaviour, the judge said.
Had Matenga truly been unable to contact the Pere family? His expression of remorse that day in court was too little, too late, the judge said.
Matenga was the author of his own misfortune. Discount for the injuries he suffered would be modest, the judge said.
He would get only 10 per cent of the full 25 per cent discount for pleading guilty to the driving matters. He had waited six months to enter his pleas, twice failing to attend court.
The assault matter resulted in a three-month prison term, the failures to attend court a month each, the threatening behaviour one month, and the escaping charge two months jail. All would be served concurrently with the driving, Judge Cathcart said.
Summarising the separate assault matter, Judge Cathcart said Matenga obviously thought he could drive how he wanted and fight how he wanted.
In the early hours of January 3, 2016, Matenga and his brother were in a group involved in tensions with another group outside Gisborne’s Sugar nightclub.
Matenga and his brother removed their shoes and each approached two men kickboxing style. The targeted men backed off but Matenga and his brother kept advancing.
Bystanders intervened until police arrived.
The escaping charge on July 28 last year involved Matenga refusing to go to the police station when told about warrants for his arrest.
Pursued by an officer, Matenga turned around and said, “I’ll knock your f***ing head off”.
He fled further down a road but the officer caught up, at which stage Matenga clenched his fists and said, “You wanna f***ing go? I’ll knock you out.”
The officer pepper-sprayed him – we congratulate the offer! He deserves a medal. Time to take the road safety message seriously NZ!
Shane Mitchell
Agree . The law needs to get these dangerous losers off the roads and the only way to do that is treating the crime as a crime not a ‘traffic accident’. If you walked down the street and attacked 6 people and put them all in hospital you’d be charged with serious criminal offences like serious assault or attempting to kill someone. Big jail time, big fines and confiscation of property to pay for the huge cost of emergency services and hospital treatment is the answer for this guy. Disqualified from driving for 3 years what a joke!
Carly Adams
I couldn’t agree more with this discussion, increasing car crash claims are making our roads far too dangerous. We do need to get these criminals off our roads before anymore innocent people are hurt and killed . Page 10 in this mornings Herald – an unlicenced pregnant “mother” (mis-used term sorry!) high on P, with an unrestrained 2yr old in the back seat crashed car on a straight road, and the child was flung from the car in the impact. Name and shame VALENCIA SKIPPER!!! You are a selfish loser, a dangerous criminal and a drain of society.
Currently being held on bail for sentencing next month. It’ll be interesting to see what wet slap on the wrist is handed out, probably because she has ‘family responsibilities’ – not that she’s cared much about that in the past. I’d suggest 5yrs compulsory volunteer work in the spinal trauma unit so she can see every day the results of her disgusting behaviour. Wait and see.
Adrian
This is shameful. The law is indeed an ass. Road safety in NZ is poor, drivers are rude and unskilled, and our roads are a disgrace. Roads and cars don’t create car accidents though, the problem though is bad drivers and law-breakers should be off the road permanently. Take away their licences and take away their cars. The idiot in this case should never be allowed to drive again. Ever!