A business owner who fled the scene after causing the death of his formerly high-profile employee - early 2000s television star Lionel Allan - following a Friday evening of post-work drinks was berated by mourning whānau today as he was sentenced to home detention and ordered to pay $20,000 in reparations.
“Murderer!” one supporter yelled as Wiremu Gray, 42, was led by security out of the dock in the filled-to-capacity Waitākere District Court.
Gray had previously pleaded guilty to two charges: careless driving causing death, which carries a maximum punishment of three months’ imprisonment, and failure to stop and ascertain injury, which is punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment.
“Not to remain present is seen as cowardly, and lacking decency and humanity,” Judge Lisa Tremewan had told Gray minutes earlier. “This [death] is something you will need to carry, and that weight cannot ever be shifted.”
But the judge also emphasised that she cannot automatically give the maximum possible sentence without considering other issues, such as his “genuine and deeply felt” remorse, his guilty pleas and his lack of any prior criminal history. She also noted that the defendant’s marriage has been destroyed and his business appears to be hanging by a thread.
“It is clear to me that you are only just managing day-to-day,” she said. “Whether your business can survive this sentence remains to be seen.”
Both Gray and Allan, who was employed as a scaffolder, were among those socialising at their work address in Henderson, West Auckland, on the evening of September 30 last year, with most of those in attendance consuming alcohol, according to court documents.
Gray would later tell police he had about four “stubbies” that evening before driving off in his Mazda light truck.
Allan, 39, left the work gathering on foot about 7.30pm, wearing a high-viz vest as he walked along the footpath on The Concourse, a wide two-lane street in an industrial area.
Gray left about 15 minutes later.
Wiremu Gray, a hit-and-run driver who killed former actor Lionel "Doeboy" Allan, at an earlier appearance in Waitakere District Court. Photo / NZME
As Gray approached Allan in the vehicle about 750 metres away, Allan “stumbled onto the road and continued walking on the road next to the footpath”, according to the agreed summary of facts.
Gray said he was driving around a bend and looking down at his cellphone, which had slipped from the passenger seat to underneath his feet, when his vehicle struck Allan.
“The impact knocked the deceased back onto the footpath,” court documents state. “The deceased sustained traumatic injuries to his upper body and head as a result of being struck at speed and died at the scene.”
Instead of stopping to help the employee, Gray acknowledged that he drove to his North Shore home.
He “panicked”, the business owner told police after turning himself in the following day, adding that he returned to the scene later that night in another vehicle.
‘Every parent’s nightmare’
Gray declined the judge’s invitation to sit down as Allan’s widow, parents, siblings and friends spent about an hour remembering him in a series of emotional victim impact statements.
“You will never know the pain you have inflicted on our family,” Allan’s wife, Laura, said through tears as she described having to move back to Australia with their two young children in the wake of the tragedy.
“Lionel was my life,” she said. “He made me feel beautiful. He made me feel like a queen. He was proud of me. He was always there to reassure me.”
She recalled the defendant calling her the next morning, not to take responsibility but to point out her husband had been drinking - a gruesome first attempt, she said, at trying to deflect blame onto the victim.
The couple had been together for 16 years and would have celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary this year, Laura Allan said, adding that she even misses his dad jokes.
Allan’s mother asked Gray how he would feel having to look at his own child in a casket.
“You have brought every parent’s nightmare into reality,” she said.
Lionel Allan and his wife, Laura. Photo / Supplied
Allan’s father later added in his own victim impact statement: “The thought of my only son taking his last breath on a cold road all on his own ... it’s something that crushes me every day.”
Friends and family described Allan as “cheeky”, “fun-loving” and with an infectiously positive outlook on life and a penchant for motivational speeches that caused him to “touch the hearts of people wherever he went”.
Longtime friend Candice Nicholls recalled him insisting that one day he would serve as the maid of honour at her wedding. His funeral was attended by people from all walks of life, many of them with their own stories of having been helped by Allan, they said.
Several family members said the death had a severe impact on their mental health, resulting in counselling and anti-depressant prescriptions. Most said they would not forgive Gray for what he did that night. Home detention, many said, would not be justice.
“I’ve lost all faith in the New Zealand justice system,” said Steven, a friend from childhood who was best man at Allan’s wedding. But he also noted that Gray appeared to have aged 20 years over the past nine months of court appearances.
“You are cursed, and what you did to Lionel will rest heavy on your soul for the rest of eternity,” he said.
‘I was a coward’
After the victim impacts were read, Gray pulled a letter of apology out of his suit jacket which the judge allowed him to read aloud. Some members of Allan’s family filed out of the courtroom.
“Yes, I was a coward, I acknowledge that,” Gray said of that night.
“I froze. I panicked.”
He said he thinks about having caused his employee’s death every moment of the day, especially when his own children come to him - reminding him that Allan’s children no longer have a father. He’s thought about what he would have wanted had he been the person hit.
“What I would want would be to have a voice - preferably someone I knew - to say to me, ‘Bro, I’m here and help is on its way,’” he said. “But I didn’t do that...
“I feel empty inside. I see all your anger and grief. I know this is all because of me and what I did.
“I’m sorry for being the cause of all your hurt, sleepless nights, anger, needing closure.”
Defence lawyer Emma Priest asked the judge for a sentence of community detention so that her client could continue to support his employees. A psychological report showed a “fight or flight” response that night, which she characterised as an unconscious response to extreme trauma.
“This offending is best described as completely out of character,” she said.
Police prosecutor Renae West acknowledged that when considering all the factors the case wasn’t one likely to result in a prison sentence. But home detention would be more appropriate than the less-restrictive community detention, she argued.
Judge Tremewan agreed.
Before announcing her sentence, the judge urged family to reconsider their refusal to engage in restorative justice, where an offender and victims agree to have a conversation in a mediated environment.
“It frequently does provide a chance for people to better express themselves,” she said. “These meetings can be even more valuable when the offending has at its root cause an unintended error in judgment.”
A victim’s family often equates the length of a sentence with a judge’s perceived value of their loved one’s life, but that is simply not the case, she added, explaining that previous similar cases had set a precedent for non-custodial outcomes.
“Mr Allan was a much-loved person,” she said, adding that no sentence would bring him back.
Gray’s home detention will last six months, followed by six months of post-detention supervision. The judge also disqualified him from driving for a year.
In a statement released to the media immediately after the hearing, Allan’s family said they were “extremely disappointed” with the outcome.
“We ... do not feel like we have received justice,” the statement said. “It is upsetting that the team of five million faced harsher restrictions during lockdown trying to save lives than what Wiremu will have for taking one.
“The laws and sentences around hit-and-run incidents need to be looked at and changed.”
‘A decent person’
Allan was a complex man who twice experienced notoriety - the first time welcomed and the second, about a decade later, very much the opposite. Neither was discussed directly in court today.
His first taste of celebrity was as a child actor better known by the stage names Lionel Wickcliffe or Doeboy, having parlayed a one-time appearance on Hercules into a recurring role as Matt Te Ahi in TV3 teen drama Being Eve from 2001 to 2002.
He later gave up acting and moved to Australia in 2005 to find work and to remove himself from the “party lifestyle” he had gotten into in New Zealand, according to Australian immigration court documents. While there, he also met his future wife and the two began to raise a family.
But he also started getting into legal trouble, and five years ago he was controversially expelled from the country as a 501 deportee.
He had racked up arrests for burglary and other charges between 2007 and 2011, but in 2013 he attacked three strangers on the street in a Sydney suburb after one of them made a disparaging remark about New Zealand. One of the men suffered a traumatic brain injury requiring surgery and Allan was ordered to serve a prison sentence.
Allan admitted an alcohol problem contributed to his offending and seemed remorseful, the judge who sent him to prison said, noting that he didn’t have a “persistent record of violence” and that the incident had “clearly been a wake-up call” for him.
“He strikes me as, at core, a decent person with a lot of positive qualities,” the judge said.
Because he spent more than a year in prison, Allan was set to be deported after release but successfully lobbied the Administrative Appeals Tribunal of Australia for a second chance in 2016. His wife, young child, mother and two sisters were living in Australia, the tribunal noted.
In June 2017, however, his home was raided and he was put in immigration detention after A Current Affair ran a 10-minute expose on the Administrative Appeals Tribunal promising to reveal the “savage thugs” and “cretins” who had managed to avoid deportation after feeding the tribunal “sob stories” and “porkies”.
The segment, titled “Gangster Paradise”, featured murderers, rapists and the mastermind behind one of the nation’s largest-ever ecstasy busts - some of whom went on to reoffend after being allowed to stay. Allan hadn’t offended again and his former TV career wasn’t mentioned. But muscular, tattooed and with made-for-TV looks, he found his mugshot used prominently in the story and in promotional material for it.
Allan’s supporters believed the segment prompted then-Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, who had the power to overturn tribunal decisions, to personally take an interest in his case.
In April 2022, less than six months before his death, Allan again found himself before a judge - this time in Auckland to face sentencing for a cluster of new burglary and theft charges. He received community supervision, with Judge David Sharp pointing at the time to a letter of support from Allan’s employer, Gray.
Allan was allowed to leave his home during work hours so he could keep his employment.
Since moving to New Zealand with his Australian wife and child he had become active in a weekly support group with fellow 501s, but he had also stumbled and had relapsed, he admitted.
During a brief conversation with the Herald outside the courtroom at the time, Allan said he preferred not to talk about his former TV career but - unlike many appearing at court that day - was exceptionally blunt about his foibles.
“I suffer addiction badly,” he said, explaining that he wanted to turn his life around for his family. “I’m an addict and a petty thief.
“I just want to be an old man with kids and get on with my life.”
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.