Cumulative jail terms for assault

Press, 20 December 1978, Page 2

Cumulative jail terms for assault

A member of the Mongrel Mob was jailed for 16 months by Mr B. A. Palmer, S.M., when he appeared before the Magistrate’s Court yesterday for sentence on two charges of assault. The Magistrate, sentencing Noel Walter Kelly, aged 22, a labourer, to eight months jail on each charge, the terms cumulative, said he did so because others like the defendant must be deterred from committing such offences.

The public must feel free to walk the streets of Christchurch without being subjected to attacks of this kind, the Magistrate said. Kelly pleaded guilty last week to assaulting Sean Anthony Moran on November 18, and to assaulting lan James Thompson on December 4. At that • time the Magistrate was told by Sergeant K. J. Hurndell that Kelly and several members of his group were leaving a food bar about 11 p.m. on November 18 when one of i their number hit the side of a parked van. When the occupant, Mr Moran, opened the door to see what was going on he was dragged out of the vehicle and punched to the ground. There he had been kicked and hit in the face with a glass — an injury which required 12 stitches.

Sergeant Hurndell said that Kelly’s explanation for his involvement was that he had been offended at derogatory remarks made by the complainant and that he, Kelly, had intended to “blow his lights out.” Of the second assault, on Mr Thompson, a printer, Sergeant Hurndell had said that Mr Thompson at the time was walking in Press Lane on his way to work when he was set upon by Kelly and other members of the Mongrel Mob for no apparent reason.

Mr Thompson had been kicked about the head and body and as a result suffered a broken thumb and required five stitches to the head. When questioned later, Kelly had said he thought Mr Thompson “looked like a bikie.” Both the assaults were laid under the Crimes Act which carried a maximum penalty of 12 months imprisonment, said the Magistrate.

He said he accepted that the defendant had become well integrated with the Mongrel Mob. The philosophy for membership of such groups, he said, was that that raised the sense oi pride of the individual. “Let me tell you there was nothing to be proud ol about these offences,” he told Kelly.

The first was a cowardly assault by a group on a single person. There had been no justification whatever for the second.

The Magistrate said that four other members of the Mongrel Mob had already been dealt with in the court during the last two days. A second member charged with assaulting Mr Thompson in Press Lane on December 4, Tuterangi Kawha Rapana, aged 19, unemployed, has been remanded on bail to January 26 for a defended hearing.