Youth given 10 days jail on assault charge

Press, 7 August 1985, Page 4

Youth given 10 days jail on assault charge

No additional custodial term will be served by a youth who was convicted in the District Court yesterday on a charge of assaulting another youth, with intent to rob him in a food bar in Cathedral Square on April 19. Judge Hattaway imposed a sentence of 10’ days imprisonment on Thomas Tamati Toa, aged 18, unemployed after convicting him on a charge of assaulting the youth aged 18, with intent to rob. The sentence will be served in a youth prison and concurrently with a sentence of corrective training imposed in June and for which Toa is due for release next week. The Judge said that while in the first instance the offence was one meriting a substantial custodial term he accepted that corrective training would have been the appropriate sentence for this offence had it been dealt with at the same time as the two other offences for which corrective training was imposed. The defendant, who had pleaded not guilty to the charge, was represented by Mr M. J. Knowles. Detective Sergeant B. M. Roswell prosecuted. Prosecution evidence was that while the complainant,

who works in a sheltered workshop, was awaiting his food order the defendant approached and pushed him, and asked him for money. He was refused, and kept pushing the complainant and reached into his pocket, ripping it. He then punched the complainant at least three times- in the face, causing an injury to a side of the mouth that required five stitches. The defendant left the shop before the police, who were called by shop staff, arrrived. The shop manageress said in evidence that she had “no doubt at all” that the defendant was the assilant. He had been a regular caller at the shop. When spoken to by a constable the defendant denied knowledge of the incident. No defence evidence was called but Mr Knowles submitted that there was “strong and real doubt” that there had been proper evidence of identification. He said the complainant had conceded in crossexamination that he could have been mistaken in his identification of the defendant. He had not see the defendant before this incident annd it must have been a relatively short event in a crowded room.

Mr Knowles said the manageress had had "a glimpse of three punches” but did not see what happened before that, and she was working on a busy night and turned away after the punches were struck. Among the submissions Mr Knowles contended that the sequence of events left some doubt whether an assault with intent to rob had occurred. If the initial pushing was relied on, this was a relatively minor use of force. He submitted that the pushing, made before money was demanded, did not constitute an assault committed by the defendant with the intention of using further force to take property. Mr Knowles said the punching certainly constituted a more serious assault, but contended that an assault only had been proved, not an assault with intent to rob. He said this assault might have been out of anger or frustration at the complainant’s refusing to hand over any money. The Judge, said he was satisfied, on the evidence, that the defendant had been identified as the assailant, and that he had assaulted the other youth in an attempt to take property by using force.