Bill Maangi murder: Josiah Te Huna gets 11-and-a-half-year minimum non-parole period
A gang associate was told he had “ample opportunity” to change his mind and go home before he decided to shoot a man dead on the front lawn of a boarding house.
The sentencing in the High Court at Gisborne for 25-year-old Mangu Kaha Tnak member Josiah Te Huna comes just over a year after the fatal shooting of Bill Maangi.
The Gisborne courthouse was full this morning with Maangi’s family and friends, with others there to support Te Huna.
Te Huna was charged with the murder on March 27 and pleaded guilty on July 31.
Justice David Boldt sentenced Te Huna to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 11 and a half years, after a reduction of two and a half years for his early guilty plea and personal circumstances.
Those circumstances included his motivation to overcome his drug addiction, which Justice Boldt said was a “destructive” part of Te Huna’s life.
Factors of Te Huna’s upbringing were also considered, with his encounters with drugs, including methamphetamine, beginning when he was about 11 years old.
Justice Boldt said Te Huna had not had a chance to live a constructive, law-abiding life.
Bill Maangi was found critically injured on the front lawn of Ormond Rd’s Forrester House accommodation complex in the early hours of September 29 last year.
He died in Gisborne Hospital the same day.
Crown Solicitor Riki Donnelly summarised the victim impact statements on behalf of Maangi’s family, saying it was not just a loss of life but the loss of a father, brother, brother-in-law and many other relationships.
Maangi was the father of four children.
“Someone who was cared for so deeply,” Donnelly said.
Maangi was shot three times, once in the left side of his chest, once in the right side of his abdomen and once in the right side of his lower back.
Reading from the summary of facts, Justice Boldt said the murder followed a dispute Maangi had with associates of Te Huna.
During the interaction, Maangi said a Mongrel Mob slogan to the men.
The men told Te Huna about the dispute.
Te Huna went to the Forrester complex armed with a loaded gun to “scare” Maangi.
Justice Boldt noted that Te Huna waited outside the complex for about half an hour before Maangi came out and was fatally shot.
Justice Boldt told Te Huna it “wasn’t even your fight”, and in that half an hour he spent waiting he had “ample opportunity” to think better of what he was doing and go home.
He said Maangi had done nothing to him.
Defence counsel Tiana Epati said Te Huna had remorse for the murder, but Judge Boldt did not agree.
Te Huna did not have previous charges of this nature, but had a history of burglary, shoplifting, theft and driving offences.
He was subject to an existing sentence at the time for burglary charges from July 2025.
Three men were charged in relation to the murder, including Te Miharo Wilson, who has pleaded not guilty to a charge of being an accessory to murder after the fact.
A second man with name suppression was also charged with murder and has pleaded not guilty.