• Elijah Meyer, 23, targeted Khalid Slaimankhel’s family, shooting into homes and endangering children.
• Meyer pleaded guilty to arson and reckless shooting, facing up to 14 years’ imprisonment.
• The attacks were retribution for Slaimankhel’s attempt to leave the Comancheros gang.

When a high-ranking Comancheros member decided while in prison that he wanted to leave the gang, it turned out to be a messy divorce.

Now a wannabe member is facing prison himself after admitting he targeted the exiting member’s extended family – shooting into a bedroom where three children were playing at one Auckland address and grazing a fleeing man in the back as he shot inside a second home.

Elijah Meyer, 23, was a “nominee” for the gang in August 2023 when he targeted the family of Khalid Slaimankhel, who is serving a six-year sentence in a Northland prison for his part in a Comanchero’s methamphetamine distribution scheme revealed by police following a lengthy undercover operation.

He was initially charged with attempted murder for the shot that grazed a fleeing stranger’s back. But that charge was reduced to discharging a weapon with reckless disregard today as Meyer appeared in the High Court at Auckland, where he also pleaded guilty to two counts of arson and another reckless shooting involving the house with the children.

He will face up to 14 years’ imprisonment for the arson charge and up to seven years for the shootings when he is sentenced in August.

As a nominee, Meyer held the lowest position in the Australia-based bikie gang, which opened a New Zealand chapter in 2018. Not yet allowed to wear a full patch, he and other prospects would have been expected to do “mandatory menial tasks to serve senior patched members of the organisation, as well as unlawful or violent acts to assess their subservience and allegiance to the clubs”, according to the summary of facts that Meyer agreed to.

One such task ended up being to stake out the homes of Slaimankhel‘s extended family, then later to target them with violence.

Khalid Naser Slaimankhel's family was targeted by the Comancheros after he left the gang. Photo / Supplied

“Mr Slaimankhel recently sought to leave the Comancheros and was ordered to pay his way out in order to leave the gang, which he did not do,” authorities said of the gang’s new ill will towards the member. “These events were a targeted retribution intended to deliver a message to Mr Slaimankhel.”

Investigators would later find notes and photos on Meyer’s phone of people and vehicles he saw outside addresses associated with Slaimankhel’s family.

Authorities said he used a long-barrelled gun to fire three shots into the first home, in Epsom, about 7pm on August 25, 2023.

“One of the fired projectiles went through the wooden window frame of the master bedroom at the front of the house, causing the interior of the window frame to chip off,” court documents state. “At the time of the shooting there were eight occupants within the house, including three young children playing in the master bedroom that was shot at.”

Thirteen minutes later, after fleeing the scene, the stolen car he had arrived at the house in was torched. Meyer arrived at the next home, in Hillsborough, at 7.31pm in a second stolen vehicle and began knocking on the door aggressively.

Those inside the home had been eating upstairs. Meyer’s victim yelled out that he was coming down, then opened the door to find a man in a balaclava holding a firearm.

“Mr Meyer immediately fired two shots in the direction of the front door,” court documents state. “The shots fired were at close range and were aimed at the front door and were lodged in the door due to [the resident’s] attempts to close it.

Former Comancheros member Khalid Naser Slaimankhel appears in the High Court at Auckland on a kidnapping charge in 2015. Photo / Jason Oxenham

“Mr Meyer placed his foot in the door to attempt to keep it open but [the victim] managed to push the door closed, and locked it, before attempting to run up the stairs away from the defendant.”

Meyer then walked to the front entrance window and aimed three more shots at the fleeing man – one of them grazing him in the back.

Less than 15 minutes later, the second stolen vehicle was set alight at nearby Nash Rd Reserve.

Police caught up to Meyer at 8.07pm that same day after spotting him in a third stolen vehicle near the reserve. Gunshot residue was found in the vehicle and on Meyer’s clothing, authorities said.

“The shooting and related arson of the getaway vehicle was part of a co-ordinated attack to target members of Mr Slaimankhel‘s wider family that Mr Meyer was a key part of,” the summary of facts states.

Slaimankhel, formerly a Dunedin bodybuilder, was also found guilty in 2015 of kidnapping a fellow bodybuilder and perverting the course of justice.

Khalid Naser Slaimankhel in a bodybuilding competition. Photo / Supplied

He came from a good family, his lawyer said at his 2022 Auckland District Court sentencing on drug trafficking charges. Lawyer Mark Ryan said at the time his client turned to drugs and gangs after his father was killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan.

Dr Hashem Slaimankhel had been a physician in Afghanistan and Pakistan before arriving in New Zealand in 1998 and taking on a role as a refugee health worker. His advocacy made enough of an impact on New Zealand that police issued a press release praising the “dedicated and deeply respected community leader” soon after his death in January 2018.

The elder Slaimankhel was among the nearly 100 people killed when an ambulance with a bomb inside detonated at a police checkpoint in Kabul. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the massacre.

At his 2022 sentencing, the younger Slaimankhel told Judge Evangelos Thomas he wanted to leave gang life behind him. Prosecutors voiced some scepticism but acknowledged the goal was a worthy one if genuine.

“It’s going to take an awful amount of work to make sure that is carried through,” Crown prosecutor Jacob Barry said.

The judge agreed, turning to Slaimankhel’s family and supporters, who filled the courtroom gallery, after the defendant was led away to begin serving his sentence. He encouraged them to continue supporting him.

“If people aren’t working hard around him, he’s going to be straight into that [gang] environment,” the judge said. “This work is really only beginning now.”

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.