Youth held knife to man’s throat

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34021, 10 December 1975, Page 9

Youth held knife to man’s throat

A youth who held a knife against the neck of another man and ordered him to drive from Greymouth to Cobden, was sentenced to detention centre training [by Mr P. L. Molyneaux, S.M., in the Christchurch Magistrate’s Court yesterday.. The youth, Peter Frank Mathewson, aged 18, an unemployed timber worker, was put on probation for 12 'months and ordered to live and work as directed. He had earlier pleaded guilty in the Greymouth Magistrate’s Court to charges of threatening to do grievous bodily harm to David Michael Walsh, carrying an offensive weapon, a knife, and being a rogue and vagabond in that he was armed with a knife with felonious intent. The Magistrate had re-

manded Mathewson to Christchurch with a view to detention centre training. Sergeant W. Homan said earlier that the defendant had approached the complainant and another in a restaurant and asked Mr Walsh if he wanted a fight. Mr Walsh declined and when he tried to get into his car the defendant had got into the rear seat, produced a flick knife and stuck it into the back of Mr Walsh’s passenger, ordering Mr Walsh to drive to Cobden. The defendant had then put the knife at the complainant’s neck, moving it to the side, nearing the jugular vein. He said that if he cut the vein the complainant would die in three minutes. Counsel (Mr A. J. G. Keenan) submitted that drink was the sole cause of the offences. The defendant had not been involved in this sort of behaviour in the past and had had an unhappy and unstable home life.