Flying kick brings gaol

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34031, 20 December 1975, Page 2

Flying kick brings gaol

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, December 19. A man was sentenced to five years imprisonment today for causing death with “a flying kung fu kick.”

Glen Arthur Hansen, aged 23, was convicted of manslaughter in kicking Murray Charles White in the head at a twenty-first birthday party at Muriwai on October 12. He had pleaded not guilty. It was a brutal attack on an unsuspecting person, said Mr Justice Mahon, sentencing Hansen in the Supreme Court at Auckland. “The blow ruptured the cerebral artery at the back of the deceased’s neck, causing a cerebral haemorrhage so massive as to cause death within 20 to 30 minutes.” The victim was at the party with his wife when towards the end of the evening a young woman assaulted a man sitting next to him. “He prepared to get up and may have intended to intervene, quite properly, or he may have decided to move away,” he said. "But Hansen launched himself from across the room and delivered a flying kick to the throat or head of the deceased. A witness described it as a kung fu kick.” Mr White was the son of a former All Black and Auckland Rugby coach, Mr “Snow” White.

Counsel, Mr R. H. Ludbrook, said Hansen did not begin the trouble at the party, “but intervened out of misguided loyalty to the girl who, according to witnesses, was being held by the hair by the deceased. The lack of bruising around the head of the deceased suggests the blow was not as heavy as its effect might suggests.”

His Honour said that although Hansen might have intended only to injure, “nothing in Mr White’s conduct could have prompted the violent attack which cost him his life.”