Jail term reduced for shotgun-user

Press, 28 August 1986, Page 8

Jail term reduced for shotgun-user

NZPA-AAP Melbourne A man convicted of disfiguring a New Zealandborn woman’s face with a shotgun blast had his maximum 15-year jail sentence reduced to 13 years yesterday. In a majority decision, the three-member Full Court of the Victorian Supreme Court allowed Paul Terrance Mallinder’s appeal against his sentence.

Mallinder, aged 24, formerly of outer suburban Ringwood, will now serve a 13-year maximum sentence with an 11-year minimum for wounding Kay Nesbitt last September with intent to do grievous bodily harm. Miss Nesbitt, aged 30, became the subject of intense media coverage showing the injuries she suffered after being hit in the face with a shotgun blast fired through a glass panel in the front door of

her suburban Malvern home. Miss Nesbitt has undergone 18 hours of plastic surgery to reconstruct the destroyed left side of her face and is due to have more surgery. Doctors at Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital saved her by surgery which included using a rib as her top jaw and a bone from her skull to patch up her eye sockets.

Miss Nesbitt gave evidence during Mallinder’s trial with her face and head covered by a scarf. Mallinder had appealed against his sentence on seven grounds, including that the maximum sentence was inappropriate, too much weight had been placed on the consequences of his offence, and the minimum had given no allowances for his youth or his prospects for rehabilitation.