Jury fails to agree on robbery verdict

Press, 16 February 1984, Page 7

Jury fails to agree on robbery verdict

A jury in the High Court deliberated for almost seven hours before telling Mr Justice Roper late last evening that it was unable to reach a verdict on a charge of aggravated robbery of the Heathcote Post Office.

His Honour discharged the jury from giving a verdict and remanded Peter flier Hristov, aged 23, to a date next week to be fixed for a new trial. The remand was in custody. Hristov had pleaded not guilty to a charge of robbing Laurie Olave Crossman of $4841 on May 19, 1983, while armed with a firearm. The trial began on Tuesday. Evidence was given that a man wearing a stocking mask over his face and carrying a rifle jumped on to the counter of the post office at Heathcote and threatened to kill the postmistress who was alone at the time. Mr G. K. Panckhurst appeared for the Crown and Messrs D. J. Taffs and A. N. D. Garrett for Hristov. Detective T. M. Gunn was the officer in charge of the case. Hristov said in evidence

vuav uc uaiiie tu new z,ealand as a refugee from Bulgaria. He denied that he had committed the robbery at the Heathcote Post Office. He admitted that a week after the robbery he had bought a car for $4OOO and had paid for it in cash. The money had been sent to him by his parents in Bulgaria. The evidence that he had repainted his car two days after the robbery was correct. It was a Falcon. He did not have sufficient paint to finish the car and the company he bought it from took it back.

Speaking of a woman who had given evidence against him, Hristov said that he had met her in Auckland where she had been on drugs. She was grubby and wearing old clothes and she was not well.

When they first met she had helped him with his English and they lived together. She came down to Christchurch with him but he did not ask her to.

“I hit her at times because all the time she argued with me. I have been hitting her and that is why I

went to live by myself,” Hristov said. “I went to Kainga. I have heard her say I did this robbery and she says that because she wants to put me in jail. She is scared and doesn’t want me to hit her any more. If the police went there she would say what they tell her.”

The woman was 32 but had the mind of a child. She was on a sickness benefit and took pills and drank, he said.

When he came to New Zealand he had a moustache but he had shaved it off. The day he was painting the car he did not have a moustache.

To Mr Panckhurst, Hristov said that his parents worked on a State farm in Bulgaria. He was their only child. His parents sent him sums of money in United States dollars.

The sums they sent him varied from $5OO to $lOOO. He had been a soldier in the army in Bulgaria and also a machinist. He earned about $lOO a week. Hristov admitted telling a constable in Rangiora about 3 a.m. that he was just out for a drive because he could

not sleep. He had been in New Zealand for about three years and had worked at C.W.F. Hamilton, Ltd. He was now on the unemployment benefit. In his final address to the jury, Mr Taffs submitted that the case had been loaded unfairly against Hristov. While he did have a pair of running shoes and yellow rubber gloves similar to those used in the robbery, so did hundreds of other people. An explanation had been given about where the money had come from to purchase the car.

The evidence of identification was completely unreliable because of the way in which it had been carried out three months after the event occurred, when there had been a fleeting glimpse of a running man. No identification had been carried out.

Where was the rifle? Why had it not been produced in court? The evidence of the woman, who admitted to being confused, had to be discarded, as she had said that she wanted to put Hristov in jail, Mr Taffs said.