An armed assault on the home of a Mongrel Mob president's daughter – where five children were inside – involved weapons of such high calibre the bullets passed through the entire house.

'It was remarkable no one was injured in this event,” Crown Prosecutor Anna Pollett told a High Court jury in Hamilton on Wednesday.

At least 96 rounds were fired into the house in Haukore St in Tauranga, and a car parked outside, from the street during the night assault.

It was one of several 'tit-for-tat” acts of violence in a rapidly escalating gang war that hit the Bay of Plenty in early 2020.

Nine senior members and affiliates of one of those gangs – the Mongols – are standing trial on a raft of drugs and weapons charges.

Some of the firearms allegedly seized from the Mongols gang on June 23, 2020, as part of Operation Silk. Photo: NZ Police.

Following a covert surveillance operation, police arrested the entire senior hierarchy of the gang in June 2020.

At the time the police said a gang war was brewing in the Bay of Plenty region, with numerous groups battling for the lion's share of the drug market there.

Among those on trial is the Mongols' national president, Jim David Thacker, also known as JD; sergeant-at-arms Leon 'Wolf” Huritu; Jason '666” Ross; Kelly 'Rhino” Petrowski; Hone 'One-er” Ronaki; Matthew Ramsden; Kane Ronaki; Te Reneti Tarau; and another man who has interim name suppression.

The trial continued on Wednesday with the second day of the closing argument of Crown prosecutor Anna Pollett, who recounted numerous alleged drug deals that were made during the 'establishment phase” of the gang in 2019.

It was a narrative that took a sudden and decidedly violent turn in early 2020, when the Mongols' efforts to intimidate other gangs in the region intensified with a series of increasingly dramatic 'tit-for-tat” incidents, Pollett said.

'What we know is that it was not just the distribution of controlled drugs ... It was the preparation and indeed the serious violence that occurred once the Mongols were established in New Zealand.”

As well as the first New Zealand chapter of the motorcycle club, Thacker had also established a barbershop in Tauranga called Bladed and Faded, following his arrival as a deportee from Australia in late 2018.

That business had become a target for the other, older gangs in the region – including, apparently, the Tauranga branch of the Mongrel Mob – which had taken exception to the arrival of the new club in their territory.

This animosity had begun on New Year's Eve 2019, almost innocuously with the throwing of a firework into the guttering of the business, which had caused some damage. Read more here.

The fire at the shop on New Year's Eve 2019. File photo/SunLive.

Whether it was a deliberate act or not, 'it wasn't left there,” Pollett said.

On January 24 the doors and all the front-facing windows of the business were smashed. This prompted Thacker, who was in Wellington at the time, to take to social media the following day to issue a challenge to his perceived rivals.

'To the spineless c...s trying to f... with my shop ... Have a proper go, you cowards,” he wrote.

'Do something worth it, bra, because it's gonna hurt.”

The challenge was accepted: Two nights later Bladed and Faded was burnt to the ground.

As Pollet told the jurors, 'It was all on at that point.”

As a secret witness – a gang insider who had given evidence against them – had told the jurors earlier in the trial, Thacker had called a meeting of the gang hierarchy where he issued a commandment: '24 hours for revenge”.

That revenge, Pollet said, took the form of four senior members of the Mongols – Thacker, Hone Ronaki, Huritu and the Auckland-based member who has name suppression – stealing a car and heading to the home in Maungatupu, where they pulled up outside and began firing.

Whether the shooters knew there were children inside the house is not known. However, one of the two adult occupants at the time was the daughter of the president of the Tauranga branch of the Mongrel Mob.

Armed police cordons on Haukore Street following the 2020 shooting. File photo: SunLive.

Scientific analysis had determined five different weapons were used in the attack. One adult witness had told the court of bullets 'like a machine gun” hitting the wall above her bed in the bedroom, which was on the far side of the house from the road.

'The power of these weapons just cannot be underestimated,” Pollett said.

Some of the weapons – a Bushmaster XM15, a DPMS Panther A-15 rifle, an AK47 and a Windham WW15 – were subsequently stashed near the Kaituna River, where they were found by police.

The tit-for-tat battle was not yet done. Several cars filled with Mongrel Mob members were mobilised and made tracks for Mongols vice president Hone Ronaki's house, which was in the midst of horticultural land west of Te Puke.

But the convoy was spotted and the alarm was raised.

Pollett recounted the evidence of a nearby resident who had watched on as several car loads of Mongrel Mob members pulled up outside his property, not far from Hone Ronaki's house.

The man had told the court he had seen three men – allegedly Thacker, Ronaki and Fred Whare, another Mongols member – walk out from Ronaki's house onto the road, about 200 to 300 metres from where the rival gang had congregated.

Without waiting, the trio had begun firing on the interlopers, he said.

'Although greater in number, the Mongrel Mob members were outgunned,” Pollett said.

The three men could have fled into the surrounding kiwifruit orchards, however 'the response by the Mongols was to outpower them ... They chose to arm themselves and shoot first, and with these types of weapons.

'The defence of self-defence is easily disproved. This was not an imminent threat. They had other options available to them, and they chose not to take them.”

The trial continues.

-Mike Mather/Stuff.