Nine year sentence for kidnapping

The man accused of kidnapping five-year-old Cina Ma from outside her Albany home has been sentenced to nine years in prison.

Deqiong ‘Aaron’ Deng, 25, of Rothesay Bay was sentenced in the High Court at Auckland on Tuesday.

Justice Judith Potter sentenced him to nine years in prison, with a minimum non-parole period of five-and-a-half years.

She said the kidnapping was a cowardly and cruel act which had caused the victim post-traumatic stress disorder and hugely impacted her family, prompting them to leave New Zealand.

Cina Ma, also known as Xin Xin, was snatched from outside her family home on July 14.

She and her young cousin were riding their scooters on the footpath when a man wearing a balaclava grabbed her and shoved her into the boot of a station wagon then sped off.

The five-year-old was found bound and gagged five days later in the wardrobe of a house being built by Deng within 200 metres of her home.

The court was told that Deng asked for a $500,000 ransom from Cina’s parents. He owed $1 million on two houses he was developing and $200,000 to his parents in China, and that he planned the kidnapping carefully.

On July 14 he grabbed her and drove her to the unoccupied house.

There he put her in a walk-in wardrobe next to a room which had the windows blacked out. He bound her arms and wrists and left her with bread, water and a bucket to use as a toilet.

Deng visited her once or twice a day from that point while he worked on his ransom demand. The next day he gagged the girl when he heard her crying.

Xin Xin was found at the home on July 18 following an extensive police investigation. Deng was arrested later that day.