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Tom Lee / Stuff
Anthony Zane Gareth Baker pleaded guilty to 16 counts of shooting at vehicles in the Rukuhia area.
A man who lives near a car enthusiast hotspot on the outskirts of Hamilton admitted to shooting eight vehicles.
Anthony Zane Gareth Baker, 32, faced sixteen charges in total: eight reckless firing of a firearm and eight intentionally damaging.
He pleaded guilty to all of them, through his attorney, in Hamilton District Court on Friday.
The crime occurred in the Rukuhia area of Raynes Road in mid-2020, court documents show.
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It’s a place about 10 minutes south of Hamilton where tensions simmer around a normal car.
A car lover said Things In July, one of the bullets went through the passenger door and somehow ricocheted off of him as he made his way to his home in Waingaro.
“It could have hit my wheel and blown my tire,” Steven Eketone said at the time. “If I had gone faster, they could have shot me in the chest.”
Another driver, Matthew Mallet of Waharoa, thought a “massive explosion” he heard was a rock.
Kelly Hodel / Stuff
Steve Eketone told Stuff in July that a gunshot fired at his car went through the passenger door and somehow ricocheted off him.
His girlfriend saw a bullet hole in the side of the car when they got home.
“You can understand if they were throwing rocks at cars, or if it got bad enough to throw a bottle, but a gun is a whole new step,” Mallet said at the time.
Police have previously said that no one was injured in the shots fired in Rukuhia.
But Baker can face the people he shot during the court process, as Judge Stephen Clark ordered a restorative justice referral.
There are eight victims, Judge Clark said.
Court documents say Baker fired at vehicles, including a silver BMW and two Nissan Skylines, with a 22-caliber rifle.
Most of the charges relate to incidents on July 18, but some are from June 16 and 19, all in Rukuhia.
Kelly Hodel / Stuff
The intersection of Raynes Road and Sharpe Road, Rukuhia, is a popular meeting place for car enthusiasts, a source of frustration for residents.
The rural area has been targeted in past police crackdowns and was listed by police as a hotspot for complaints from child runners in 2017, when Waikato councils were considering car curfews to curb the problem.
And in 2019, a Tamahere resident described an intersection with Raynes Road as “just black with skid marks.”
Shortly after the shooting in July, residents said Things The racing boys had been gathering at the corner of Sharpe Road and Raynes Road for years.
“I’ve been here three or four years and it’s been every Friday night,” Steve Rowe said. “You hear them, they run down the road and once they get there, they tear themselves apart.
Another resident, who did not want to be identified, came across a stopped driver in the middle of the road, who said he had been shot.
“I get angry because I can hear them all pass … But to go draw a gun?” Said the resident.
When Baker first appeared in court, he was granted provisional name suppression.
This was not renewed at his appearance on Friday.
He was placed in preventive detention and will appear for sentencing in January.
