‘One person doesn’t make a whole area bad’

Sunday, 5 November 2023

Days before he was murdered, he rode his bike here.

It’s on this driveway that Ruthless-Empire was seen cruising up and down on his plastic ride-on; a typical suburban scene in a typical suburban street.

The little guy was doing the best he could to steer, says a neighbour. He was wearing a brightly coloured onesie and an oversized jersey. He was days away from turning two.

“He could push himself with his little legs, and he had a little smile on his face. He crashed into the fence not long after, but he didn’t cry.”

Two weeks after Ruthless Empire, known as Ru, or ‘baby Ru’, suffered fatal and non-accidental injuries in this house on Taitā’s Poole St there’s no sign he was ever here at all.

Gone is the pile of toys seen on the lawn days after his suspected homicide; gone is the police tape. The house with expletives and warnings etched on its windows looks empty.

This is a good street, says a resident, who remembers playing on the road as a child; folks tend to know each other here and there’s never really any problems. Except for the ones in the house where Ru lived, that is.

“They were scum” says another resident of the adults who moved into the property in January. Yet another tells of the regular screaming and yelling, a woman’s violence towards the four chained dogs.

He estimates he called the police about 15 times and Kāinga Ora about 30.

“They did nothing. All it would have taken is a visit and a look around to know this was no place for a kid. This could have been prevented.”

“This” of course, is the killing of Ru, and while there have been no arrests and few official answers in the case there has been plenty of speculation and accusations, much playing out on social media.

What we do know is that at 10.30am on October 22 Ru was taken to Hutt Hospital in an unresponsive state and with several injuries and bruising. Efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.

On the street where Ru spent his last few weeks, residents are angry, frustrated and worried. Mostly they’re just angry.

One man says that every day the police call him to ask for any new information “but I want to ask if they’ve got information for us?”

‘One bad person doesn’t make a whole area bad’

Thursday afternoon finds Taitā warm and sleepy.

At 3pm, families are picking up their children from Taitā Central School. Across the road from the house where Ru and his family lived, a father shoulders a Spider-Man backpack and holds the hand of his small son as they walk home together.

Ru’s death is far from the only nightmare to have struck the suburb.

To many living around Wellington, Taitā - te reo for driftwood on a river bed - is associated with a number of shocking crimes, including the abduction, sexual assault, and murder of school girl Karla Cardno 30 years ago, a crime that shocked not just the suburb and its wider region, but the whole country.

Cardno was abducted while on a trip to the Churton Cres Four Square - next to Poole St - by Paul Dally, who took the 13-year-old to his nearby home where he raped and tortured her for 22 hours before killing her.“You just don’t walk past [the house],” a resident said in 2019, “It’s a bad, bad house.”

Over the years the neighbourhood has been rocked by homicides, drug busts, gun crime, and a daylight sexual assault. In 2015 Adam Watkins was shot dead in a Taitā home by his partner’s daughter, in a confrontation a judge later contextualised as marked by domestic violence and drug use. In 2018 Faapaia Fonoilaepa, 29, was killed on his way to a liquor store when he was mistaken for a gang member by Warren Pay, who tried to shoot him, then stabbed him to death. And in 2020 Gisborne man Davis Phillips was stabbed to death during a confrontation at a party.

Nonetheless, northern ward councillor Naomi Scott said Taitā’s reputation is unfair. She was born and raised here , her family has been connected to the area for over half a century.

“Taitā is a fabulous little community,” she says. “What happened was tragic for everyone, but unfortunately things like that can happen at any place.”

Scott had an idyllic childhood. Her friends and family would go swimming at Taitā Rock and she spent days playing in parks with her friends from Tāita Intermediate School, many of whom she still kept in touch with today.

There were local community stalwarts who had gone on to do great things for the region, including Dina Awarau and Twiggy Johnston-Welsh, and the suburb boasted amazing facilities offered by the Walter Nash Centre and surrounding areas.

“Every suburb has its issues - I bet you [Wellington million-dollar suburb] Khandallah does too. It’s unfair to paint Taitā with that… we did have a bit of a rivalry with Naenae, we all laugh about it now, but it’s certainly not anything sinister.“

The majority of Taitā was built in 1946. Servicemen returning to the Hutt Valley after World War 2 required homes to live in, to house their families that would grow as part of the post-war baby boom.

Properties were quickly built for them, with oak trees planted along the footpaths outside.

Most recent available figures are outdated - but according to the 2018 Census, under half of the residents living in Tāita north and south identified as Pākeha, with large populations of Māori and Pasifika living in the suburb. The median age is 31-32 [for Taita North/South], but it has a younger median Māori population, aged 24-25.

Nowadays the square, weatherboard houses built for returned soldiers are painted pastel shades of blue, yellow, and cream. They sit on closely mowed sections like Monopoly hotels.

Twenty years ago the average price for these homes was $108,000, and even up to 2017 you could purchase one for under $400,000. But in 2021 one sold for over a million, and the new build town houses that are appearing in the suburb have a starting price of $600,000. First home buyers priced out of the city have slowly migrated to Tāita - but the suburb has a lower than the national average homeownership rate.

One student from Naenae College who stopped to chat to the Sunday Star-Times had moved with his family to Taitā a few months ago, and was enjoying it, he said, catching the bus to and fro from Tāita to his school.

How would he describe the area? “Safe,” he said.

Another young woman said she moved to the area from Manila, in the Phillipines. She and her family are enjoying being here she said, smiling.

Rissa and Graham Lees were heading to Taitā Central School when they stopped to chat. They had moved to the suburb three weeks ago from Upper Hutt and were “absolutely loving it”.

Part of the appeal was Taitā Central School. The smaller classes and hands-on teachers were a draw, with their daughter loving her time there.

“The teachers are really cool… And the free school lunches are amazing,” said Rissa.

“[Taitā] is not as bad as people make it out to be. We just moved from Upper Hutt and I wouldn’t go back, my kids wouldn’t want to go back. They’re so much happier here.”

The area’s new facilities, including the Walter Nash centre, were also a large draw.

“My kids are always nagging me to go to the library… my girl can’t wait for intermediate because she gets to play netball there.”

Moses Lukuru was heading home after grabbing some burgers from the Island Food and Fish and Chips store.

He moved to Taitā three months ago, and enjoyed living there.

What did he most like about it? “The food,” he joked. He had grabbed a Hawaiian burger and cheeseburger from the shop.

Lukuru doesn’t live too far from the home Ru and his family lived. While he was saddened by the death, he said the suburb is much more than the actions of a few of its residents.

“In my opinion, a couple or one bad person doesn’t make a whole area bad.”