Gang retribution: Comancheros member Patrick Langi pleads guilty to Auckland shootings

He is the second defendant to have pleaded guilty in as many weeks after the Crown agreed to drop a charge of attempted murder.
Justice Mathew Downs set a sentencing date of August 19 alongside co-defendant Elijah Meyer, 23. The duo was due to stand trial next month.
'Targeted retribution'
Court documents state Langi and Meyer, a Comancheros prospect, carried out the shootings in August 2023 after high-ranking patched member Khalid Slaimankhel said he wanted out.
Slaimankhel is serving a six-year sentence in Ngāwha prison in Northland for his part in a Comanchero's methamphetamine distribution scheme.
'Mr Slaimankhel recently sought to leave the Comancheros and was ordered to pay his way out in order to leave the gang, which he did not do,' authorities said of the gang's new ill will towards the member.
'These events were a targeted retribution intended to deliver a message to Mr Slaimankhel.'
On August 10, 2023 - just over two weeks before the shootings occurred - the Department of Corrections searched Unit 8 of Rimutaka Prison, where gang president Naufahu and fellow patched member Jalal Safi were housed.
Comancheros MC president Pasilika Naufahu, pictured during a court appearance in 2021. Photo / NZME
Officers seized notebooks from Safi's cell, as well as a mobile phone he was using when the search began.
Authorities would later realise the phone had been used to search Google Maps for the same streets where the shootings would later occur.
The notebooks also contained addresses on those streets, with notations such as 'mum' and 'brother older'.
On August 15, 10 days before the shootings, Langi used his phone to screenshot maps of the same addresses. That same day, co-defendant Meyer was 'directed by unknown parties to conduct surveillance' on the addresses. He took notes and photos that were later recovered from his phone.
Timeline of violence
Langi and Meyer showed up at the first property, in Epsom, about 7pm on August 25, 2023. Meyer fired at least three shots while another unidentified man was armed but his gun appears to have jammed, documents state.
'One of the fired projectiles went through the wooden window frame of the master bedroom at the front of the house, causing the interior of the window frame to chip off,' court documents state.
'At the time of the shooting there were eight occupants within the house, including three young children playing in the master bedroom that was shot at.'
Thirteen minutes later, after fleeing the scene, the stolen car used by the duo was torched. Meyer and Langi arrived at the next home, in Hillsborough, at 7.31pm in a second stolen vehicle.
Khalid Naser Slaimankhel appears in the High Court at Auckland in 2015. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Meyer got out of the vehicle and began knocking on the door aggressively. Langi did not go up to the door with him, but he was charged with the same offence for having aided or encouraged the crime.
Those inside the home had been eating upstairs, and a man yelled that he was coming down. Meyer opened fire as the man opened the door, with the bullets lodging in the door as the victim attempted to shut it.
'Mr Meyer placed his foot in the door to attempt to keep it open but [the victim] managed to push the door closed, and locked it, before attempting to run up the stairs away from the defendant,' police noted in the summaries of facts for both men.
Meyer then walked to the front entrance window and aimed three more shots at the fleeing man – one of them grazing him in the back.
Less than 15 minutes later, the second stolen vehicle was set alight at nearby Nash Rd Reserve.
Police caught up to Meyer and Langi at 8.07pm that day after spotting them in a third stolen vehicle near the reserve. Gunshot residue was found in the vehicle and on both men's clothing, authorities said.
The family of Comancheros member Khalid Slaimankhel was targeted after he tried to leave the gang.
'The defendant Langi declined to comment to most questions, [but] when confronted with the gunshot residue evidence he stated that it was 'bullshit' and police must have made that up,' court documents state.
The duo could face up to 14 years' imprisonment for arson and up to seven years for discharging a firearm with reckless disregard.
'The shooting and related arson of the getaway vehicle was part of a co-ordinated attack to target members of Mr Slaimankhel's wider family that Mr Meyer and Mr Langi were a key part of,' the summaries of facts state.
Good family, tragic past
Slaimankhel, formerly a Dunedin bodybuilder, was also found guilty in 2015 of kidnapping a fellow bodybuilder and perverting the course of justice.
He came from a good family, his lawyer said at his 2022 Auckland District Court sentencing on drug trafficking charges. Lawyer Mark Ryan said at the time his client turned to drugs and gangs after his father was killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan.
Khalid Naser Slaimankhel in a bodybuilding competition.
Dr Hashem Slaimankhel had been a physician in Afghanistan and Pakistan before arriving in New Zealand in 1998 and taking on a role as a refugee health worker.
His advocacy made enough of an impact in New Zealand that police publicly praised the 'dedicated and deeply respected community leader' after his death in January 2018.
The elder Slaimankhel was among the nearly 100 people killed when an ambulance with a bomb inside detonated at a police checkpoint in Kabul. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the massacre.
At his 2022 sentencing, the younger Slaimankhel told Judge Evangelos Thomas he wanted to leave gang life behind him. Prosecutors voiced some scepticism but acknowledged the goal was a worthy one if genuine.
'It's going to take an awful amount of work to make sure that is carried through,' Crown prosecutor Jacob Barry said.
The judge agreed, turning to Slaimankhel's family and supporters, who filled the courtroom gallery, after the defendant was led away to begin serving his sentence. He encouraged them to continue supporting him.
'If people aren't working hard around him, he's going to be straight into that [gang] environment,' the judge said. 'This work is really only beginning now.'
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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