Wounding charges trial

Press, 14 August 1982, Page 4

Wounding charges trial

Evidence that a man was stabbed in an eye and had still not recovered sight fully was given .in the District Court yesterday when a defendant faced two wounding charges. Kevin Raymond Ambler, aged 27, unemployed, elected trial by jury and denied a charge of wounding Timothy John Samuel with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and a similar charge involving a woman complainant, whose name was suppressed. After hearing depositions of evidence of prosecution witnesses Messrs L. M. Hooker and D. F. Prestney, Justices of the Peace, committed the defendant for trial in the High Court on both charges.

He was remanded in custody pending his trial, on a date to be fixed.

Defence was reserved by Mr W. Rosenberg, who appeared on behalf of Mr D. C. Fitzgibbon. Detective Sergeant J. Lyall prosecuted.

Depositions or statements of evidence of seven prosecution witnesses were heard. The evidence of the woman complainant was suppressed. Mr Samuel gave evidence that when he and the woman

complainant and others went to their car after leaving a hotel on the evening of June 17 the defendant approached the woman to speak to her. Raised conversation was heard and the defendant appeared to punch the woman in the stomach. He thought the defendant had an object in his hand, but was not sure. Mr Samuel ran at the defendant with an upraised bottle. The woman complainant screamed to look out, as he had a knife. He then saw that the defendant held a knife at shoulder height. ■'

Mr Samuel said he struck a glancing blow to the defendant’s temple. They fell to the ground, fighting, and he felt a sharp pain in his left eye and bled profusely’ from this wound. He later found he had other wounds in the left shoulder, and chest.

After being stabbed in the eye he thought he had lost his eye and ran to the hotel toilet and after washing away some blood found he could see vaguely red through the eye.

Mr Samuel said that when he returned to where the woman complainant was being attended he found she

had a small laceration to her stomach. Mr Samuel spent five days in hospital, and had eye surgery and had 17 stitches

to a back injury and six in his chest. His eye was not back to normal “and it never will be,” Mr Samuel said.