The victim’s elderly mother, who was in a wheelchair, had watched the attack. Tanirau Whaanga’s lawyer, Chris Nicholls, had said at sentencing that his client had attempted to get help for anger issues and was a walking time bomb just ready to go off. At the time Tanirau Whaanga headbutted the victim he was still serving a sentence of intensive supervision for an earlier attack in which he had stomped on the neck of a man laid out unconscious by a relative. The prone man s neck bore the pattern from the sole of Tanirau Whaanga s shoe. John Pratt, a professor of Criminology at the Institute of Criminology at Victoria University, is undertaking research on the relationship between risk, populism and criminal justice.
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Man who killed stranger during car park dispute eligible for parole
26 Jan, 2021 01:30 AM
4 minutes to read
Emilio Tanirau Whaanga in the dock at the High Court in Wellington. Photo / NZ Herald
A man who killed a stranger after headbutting him during a dispute over a supermarket car park has become eligible for parole - just six months after being sentenced for the death.
Emilio Richard Mac Tanirau Whaanga appeared before the Parole Board late last year, just months after being given a sentence of three years and three months in prison.
In December 2019, the 24-year-old, who at the time was serving a one-year sentence of intensive supervision for stomping on another person s neck, became angry with a fellow shopper after believing he had parked in an incorrect car park in Lower Hutt.