$l000 fine for attack on wife’s lover

Press, 4 November 1986, Page 38

$l000 fine for attack on wife’s lover

PA Dunedin A clerk, aged 25, who found his wife in bed with a man he knew was proficient in the martial arts, regretted “enormously” that he had caused him an injury that led to the loss of an eye, a judge was told. Judge Willy fined Robin Alan Pantali $lOOO. Pantali had been convicted of assaulting Russell John Berry with intent to injure at Christchurch on October 17. Defence counsel, Mr J. B. Robertson, said Pantail until four days before the attack believed he was a happily married man. When he learned that his wife, to whom he had been married for 2>/ 2 years, was having a relationship with Berry he

was devastated. He became so consumed by what he saw as the wrong perpetrated on him that he went to Christchurch “to sort the matter out.” He took a stick with him because he knew Berry was proficient in the martial arts, Mr Robertson said. He went to Mr Berry’s house intending to inflict pain, but certainly not injury. Mr Robertson said Pantall broke into the house by breaking a window. He flicked on the light and saw his wife and Berry in bed ... “and somehow a blow hit the man on the side of his face and the injury occurred.” The eye had to be surgically removed. Pantali “regretted enor-

mously” the consequences of allowing his hurt to surface as it did, Mr Robertson told the Judge. The Judge said Pantail’s actions had been illegal and anti-social. Reports and references submitted made it “patently obvious” that Pantall, apart from this incident, was a respectable and worth-while member of the community. His employer had described him as “honest and reliable with a happy outgoing nature.” The Judge said neither community service nor periodic detention was an appropriate sentence. He imposed the $lOOO fine “as a deterrent to the defendant and likeminded disgruntled husbands.”