Mother of murdered inmate wants accountability from Corrections

By Finn Blackwell of RNZ

The mother of a man who was murdered in Auckland’s maximum security prison wants the Corrections Department held accountable for his death.

Blake Lee was fatally shanked by another inmate in an exercise yard inside Auckland Prison at Paremoremo in March 2020.

A coronial inquest at the Auckland District Court heard details about Lee’s transfer to the prison, just hours before he was murdered.

For Lee’s mother, Teresa Absolum, it was the good things about her son she tried to remember.

“It’s obviously very painful listening to the evidence as it brings feelings of sadness and anger at the way Blake died up,” she said.

“I am trying to remember all the good things about my son.”

Lee was killed in the prison yard, shortly after his transfer from Whanganui prison to Paremoremo.

The man responsible for his murder, Siuaki Lisiate, was a senior member of the Crips gang, while Lee was an affiliate of the Mongrel Mob.

In 2020, there was no set policy on where gang members should be placed in the prison.

An inquest heard Blake Lee was killed after being transferred to Paremoremo. Photo / RNZ

Paremoremo’s prison director at the time, David Pattinson, was asked if it was practical to separate rival gang members inside.

“Not unless we built a bigger jail,” he said.

“It would be difficult, there are principles around the style of people that come together, what influence they can have on the rest of the prisoner group.

“We work hard to maintain a safer environment.”

He was questioned by Susan Gray, the lawyer representing Lee’s mother, about the risk of letting a newly transferred prisoner into the yard with different gang members.

“He enters into the yard, he greets people in the yard, they greet him,” Pattinson said.

“He acts with confidence in that space, he looks comfortable in that environment, and unfortunately others intervene to change that for him.

Pattinson said that at the time, before the attack, it looked like a good decision to offer Lee the opportunity to exercise.

Two years earlier, Lisiate had attacked double murderer Graeme Burton with a shank while both men were doing time in Paremoremo.

Gray asked Pattinson about Lisiate’s violent past.

“You would agree, surely, that Mr Lisiate had a history of extreme violence,” Gray asked.

“I don’t disagree with that,” Pattinson replied.

Lee’s mother told RNZ she wanted to see members of rival gangs separated in prison.

“I would like Corrections to be accountable for my son’s death but also for gang members from different gangs never to be mixed,” she said.

But Pattinson told the lawyer representing Corrections, Claire Paterson, the murder was not gang-related.

“A lot of work was done by Corrections in the aftermath of this tragic incident,” he said.

“Was there any evidence found that this was in fact a gang-related incident?” she asked.

There was no evidence to support that, Pattinson said.

That was despite an earlier High Court memorandum from Lisiate himself, describing gang tensions behind bars as ever-present.

Pattinson said that if Lee were transferred to Paremoremo again today, he would likely be put in the same unit.

Later in the day, the inquest heard from the current prison director, Stephen Parr.

He said the protocols in place today would prevent Lee from being placed into a mix on the day of his arrival.

Parr spoke about the shank Lisiate had, saying it was not uncommon for makeshift weapons to be made from items in the prison environment.

“The screening procedures in place were then and are now considered appropriate; however, no procedure is foolproof nor immune to human error,” he said.

“It is unfortunate that these procedures were not completed to the required or expected standard on that day.”

Parr said he was not in a position to definitively say whether correct scanning procedures would have detected Lisiate’s shank.

“Staff acted in accordance with the process that was in place at the time in placing Mr Lee in the yard with that mix of gangs,” he said.

The inquest before Coroner Alexander Ho continues on Friday.

  This story was first published on rnz.co.nz