Deadly home invasion toll still being felt

HIS mate was shot dead when intruders stormed an Ipswich home in a violent robbery.

CHANGED MAN: Tovia Junior Max Fualema has been jailed over a home invasion that resulted in the death of a co-offender. Picture: Ross Irby

HIS mate was shot dead when intruders stormed an Ipswich home in a violent robbery.

Three years on, the last of the four surviving offenders and the man who was to provide the back-up "muscle" has finally been sentenced by a judge.

Watched by supportive family and his pastor, Tovia Junior Max Fualema, 26, from Kingston, pleaded guilty in Ipswich District Court to a Crown charge that he entered a Stafford St dwelling with intent to steal by break at night, threaten violence while armed and in company at Booval on March 4, 2016.

Fualema represented himself in court, telling Judge Alexander Horneman-Wren SC the background to his bad behaviour back in March 2016.

Fualema said he'd been homeless with no job, and took up the offer of joining in with the home invasion as he needed the money at the time.

He told the court he had since found a well-paid job and was financially supporting three children and his parents.

His case before the court had repeatedly been delayed due to his lack of funds to cover the costs of a barrister.

Crown prosecutor Noel Needham said Fualema, then 23, had been recruited by an associate David Nanai, 26, (shot dead during the robbery) that they were "going to do a job that he understood to be a robbery".

The target house was identified by his co-accused Johanna Maree Harper and the car was driven by Gerard Harper, 27, to Stafford St that night with the five people including Joshua Leonard John Watson-Scully.

They wore hoodies and Nanai had a bag to conceal a sawn-off shot gun.

"Fualema's role was essentially to provide muscle, there as back-up to his friend Nanai," Mr Needham said.

"Fualema heard gun shots, he was not inside the house, and he ran back to the car. They left leaving Nanai in the house."

Fualema told Judge Horneman-Wren he had suffered for his mistakes.

"I apologise for my actions. I was going through a rough time," he told the court.

"I had been evicted from my home, my wife and two dogs we were living out of a car."

Judge Horneman-Wren said that if ever a case showed the awful affects of drugs, it was this home invasion.

"So many lives have been affected," he said.

Judge Horneman-Wren noted that in the three years since the crime, Fualema had taken many steps to improve himself, and now stood before the court as the man he had become, not the man he was back then.

Fualema was sentenced to three years' jail, and ordered to serve eight months.

He will be released to parole on October 27.

In 2017, Johanna Maree Harper, 26, from Boronia Heights, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years' jail and served 11 months.

Joshua Leonard John Watson-Scully, 22, from Coominya, was sentenced to four years and three months' jail.

Gerard Harper, 27, served six months' jail after receiving a head sentence of three years.