Man’s face required 16 stitches

Press, 27 June 1989, Page 15

Man’s face required 16 stitches

A hotel patron struck with a glass by another patron needed sixteen stitches in four places of his face. In the District Court yesterday Judge Noble sent Warren Alan Sykes to prison for six months. The Judge accepted it had not been the defendant’s intention to hit the man with the glass. Assaults of this nature, however, had to be met with custodial sentences. There had been far too many assaults with glasses in hotels in recent times, said the Judge. Sykes, aged 27, a fitter and turner (Mr Rupert Glover), committed the assault in the West

Melton Tavern on February 17.

Mr Glover said the police accepted that his client had not intended to inflict such injuries. Sykes, he said, had felt threatened and in his instinctive reaction forgot he had the glass in his hand.

There had been no lasting or permanent injury to the victim.

After the assault Sykes and a ' friend were followed by an angry mob from the hotel. This mob, said Mr Glover, did about $2OOO damage to the friend’s car.

Saying his client had asked to undergo an anger management

course, Mr Glover sought a sentence of periodic detention.

The Judge said the aggravating feature in the defendant’s case was that between 1982 and 1986 he had been convicted of four assaults. ‘VICIOUS’ ASSAULT

For what the Judge described as “a vicious and unnecessary’’ assault on a woman, aged 74, a young man was sent to prison for six months. Dean Neil Kawana, aged 23, a process worker (Mr Ron Lemm), appeared for sentence for assaulting Ngahu Atareta Adelaide Kemp.

Kawana, who had no previous convictions for

offences of violence, was on parole at the time of the assault.

According to the police summary, Kawana lifted the woman, his landlady, off the floor by the throat and later grabbed her by the head and threw her against a wall.

The assault followed a dispute over unpaid rent and the defendant’s property. The complainant collapsed and fainted, and assistance was given by a workman at the property. VEHICLE HOLD UP An incident in which a motorist at a service station was unlawfully detained by a man with a knife and had his $12,000

car unlawfully taken, resulted in a man being remanded in custody for a week.

It is also alleged that Ricky Donald Scott dangerously drove the vehicle, which was the property of the Shangri La Restaurant, with an excess blood-alcohol level, and failed to stop for a uniformed officer. DRUG. OFFENCE The police found 1797 g of cannabis at the address of Kieron Emery Simms, which he said was for his own use. Simms, aged 34, smoked the drug for relief from chronic lower back pain — the result of a serious accident several

years ago, said counsel, Mr Nigel Dunlop.

Simms, who admitted cultivating cannabis, possessing cannabis, 750 cannabis seeds, and a pipe for the commission of an offence against the Misuse of Drugs Act, was convicted.

The Judge fined him $l2OO with $260 court costs.

Sergeant Pat Creasey said the cannabis was found in various parts of the defendant’s address when it was visited by the police on June 21. In the attic they found the walls lined with silver paper and the area lit by fluorescent lights, said Sergeant Creasey.