Mongrel Mob member Terrence Brown jailed for drive-by shooting on Christmas Day

A patched Mongrel Mob member wanting to avenge his brother’s death peppered a street with bullets, during a drive-by shooting on Christmas Day.

As he drove off down the suburban street in Lower Hutt, where the rival gang member lived, Terrence Morgan Brown celebrated with gang gestures and a primal roar.

Luckily, no-one was hurt.

The day before the shooting, Brown, who was 26 at the time, had cut off his electronic monitoring bracelet and left his address 23 days into an eight-month sentence.

His target that day was a Black Power gang member and the brother of a man who was allegedly involved in the death of Brown’s brother, Albert Enoka, on 10 December, 2024.

According to the summary of facts, Brown and an unidentified associate drove to an address in Naenae, a suburb of Lower Hutt, in the early evening of 25 December, 2024.

The day was described as “a clear day in the middle of the school holidays, when members of the public were out and about, and visiting their family members”.

Children were also present at the house that Brown shot at.

As Brown lay in the backseat of a white Holden Commodore, his face concealed with a bandana, he had a .22 LR Ruger semi-automatic firearm by his side.

Brown asked his associate: “Are they still out on the road?”

“Yeah, they’re all there… they’re right there… they’re looking at us,” his associate said.

Brown sat up, looked at the state house and ducked down again.

Aiming the firearm out the back passenger’s side window, he fired two shots at the man, as they drove towards his house.

As they passed the victim’s address, Brown sat up and fired a further six shots at the victim through the open window, before turning and firing another two shots at the man and his house.

He wanted to keep going, but the gun refused to fire. Spent bullet cases were ejected into the vehicle.

The summary said Brown fired 10 shots in quick succession, and celebrated with gang sign gestures and a primal roar as they drove off.

Two days later, when police searched the house where Brown was arrested, they found a .22 LR Ruger semi-automatic firearm in a wardrobe of the bedroom where he had been staying.

‘He’s an addict’

On Friday, Brown appeared in the Wellington District Court by audio-visual link from Auckland Prison.

Brown’s lawyer, Steve Gill, said his client had an appalling start in life and a terrible upbringing, which included smoking methamphetamine since the age of 15.

“He’s an addict, who’s smoked meth his whole life,” he told Judge Bruce Davidson.

That drug addiction was coupled with mental health problems, ADHD and several associated disorders.

The court heard Brown had recently received a further two years’ jail for assaulting another prisoner.

“Unfortunately, he’s got a long road ahead,” Gill said.

Crown prosecutor Morgan Gavey described Brown’s prospects of rehabilitation as “remote”.

Despite acknowledging his long history of drug use, Gavey said he shouldn’t receive any credit for this.

She also sought a Firearms Prohibition Order, which Gill didn’t oppose.

Brown had earlier accepted a sentencing indication of 57 months’ jail, recognising that the offending occurred while he was on home detention, his previous convictions and the fact he’d already been sentenced to one year’s jail on a charge of possessing a firearm.

Judge Davidson told Brown the crucial issue at sentencing was to decide what further credits should be applied, aside from the 25 percent he’d indicated was available for Brown’s guilty plea.

Although no updated pre-sentence report had been prepared, the judge said he had a raft of material from earlier sentencings.

The judge acknowledged that, in the past, judges had given Brown substantial discounts for his personal circumstances.

He accepted that while these reports were aged and Brown had received significant credit for them, some of those features still prevailed.

“It seems very clear to me there is a causal link between your offending and what can be described as an appalling upbringing,” he said.

On a charge of doing a dangerous act with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, Brown was jailed for three years, with Judge Davidson noting this sentence was imposed in conjunction with the earlier one for the firearms charge.

This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald.