$30,000 worth of damage: Man ripped walls open to steal copper pipes during home burglary

News
Crime

Author: Shannon Pitman,
Publish Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2026, 12:32pm

Clifton Yates took a rental truck to a home and gutted it of copper piping.

A woman whose home was gutted by burglars who ripped copper pipes from the walls lost far more than metal, with thieves also taking sentimental pieces she had collected with her late husband.

Clifton Yates and his associates not only caused $30,000 in damage to the woman’s stripped-out house but took a cherished jazz CD collection and antique furniture built up over decades.

Now, the recidivist burglar has been jailed for more than two years after he appeared for sentencing in the Whangārei District Court on a burglary charge and receiving property.

At about 1.30am on May 15, 2026, Yates and others unknown cut through a wire fence at the property and reversed a rented furniture truck inside.

They went through the house, ripping out drywall to reach copper wiring, then loaded kayaks, a dishwasher, roof screws, a dinghy and 10kg of copper into the truck.

At 7.30am, a neighbour saw the truck outside and contacted the owner, who confirmed it should not be there.

“You were there for hours,” Judge Greg Davis said at the recent sentencing.

The offenders left the scene.

The burglary occurred weeks after Yates came into possession of aluminium extrusion whalers, taking six to a local recycling depot and pocketing $209.

He later returned with three more, collecting another $157.

The summary of facts recorded damage to the Parua Bay property of around $10,000 but the victim advised the court it exceeded $30,000 and was not fully covered by insurance.

The victim addressed the court and said her house was stripped and the insurance claim had been painstaking.

“It’s taken a lot of detail, every single tradesman that I’ve had to phone, every single item that I’ve had to cost, and the list of items stolen was absolutely huge,” she said.

As the months passed, the victim noticed other missing items, including sentimental furniture and a jazz CD collection she had purchased with her late husband.

“These are not just chairs or tables or something like that to the victim of this offending,” Judge Davis said.

“This is part of her life, part of the life that she and her late husband created together.

“They are of significant sentimental value to her. They are those things that probably don’t mean much to anybody else, but often mean the world to the person whose property it is.

“It’s not just a CD, it’s a memory.”

At the time of the 2025 burglary, Yates had just served a sentence of home detention for other burglaries and was still subject to release conditions.

The court heard Yates had breached his home detention multiple times, including being absent from the address three times in one month.

Yates was sentenced to two years and nine months’ imprisonment.

Shannon Pitman is a Whangārei-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the Te Tai Tokerau region. She is of Ngāpuhi/Ngāti Pūkenga descent and has worked in digital media for the past five years. She joined NZME in 2023.