Soane Patita Toutai’olepo (19) was sentenced to two-years imprisonment for grievous bodily harm, when he threw a rock injuring another student in a school rivalry between Tupou College and Tonga College, in 2019.

Lord Chief Justice Whitten sentenced the defendant on February 21, after he pleaded guilty to the one count.

The Court heard on April 26, 2019 at around 8:00pm, a school truck from Tupou College was transporting students home, after the last day of the College Sports Competition. One of them was the 12-year-old victim. 

As the Tupou College truck reached Tonga College at Ha’ateiho, the defendant (a senior student at Tonga College) and a few other fellow students were standing at their school's front gate.

The Tonga College students then started to throw rocks at the Tupou College truck. The defendant picked up a large rock and threw it at the truck, striking the victim on the left side of his head.

The victim fell unconscious and was immediately rushed to Vaiola Hospital, where he underwent surgery for a compound depressed fracture to the left temporal bone of his skull.

The defendant admitted to the offending and cooperated with Police. At the time, he was 18-years-old, undertaking technical studies under a TVET program at Tonga College, as he was interested in mechanical work.

Chief Justice Whitten said, Probation reported that he was remorseful and had apologized to the victim and made amends. The Probation Officer recommended a fully suspended sentence.

“In the instant case, I am not convinced that when he threw the large rock, the defendant only intended to smash a window of the truck. There were students, including the victim, in the back of the flat bed truck. They were an obvious target.

“Even if the intention was to smash a window, the rock would still have most likely entered the vehicle there by injuring an occupant,” he said.

However, after considering the defendant's early guilty plea, his relatively young age, having no previous record and reported improvements to his behaviour, among other mitigating factors, the Chief Justice suspended the final year of his sentence, on conditions.

"It is a very great shame that the defendant must start his adult years by spending a year in prison. However, to suspend the whole of the sentence would, in my view, risk sending a message to those who might consider future rival school violence, and which results in serious injury, that they can expect to escape actual prison time. If that ever was the belief, it must be dispelled."

He said such mindless violence must not continue.

"It is incumbent on the Court to apply the law in a manner, which reinforces that community expectation and which serves to protect all school students from street violence instigated for other reason than that they attend different schools."

The sentence was also reduced by the two-weeks the defendant was remanded in police custody, after being arrested.

The Chief Justice then directed during his incarceration, to the greatest extent possible, the defendant is to be kept with young offenders of similar age, and separated from older offenders with lengthier and more serious criminal histories.