Red light district stabbing admitted
A 20-year-old man abandoned his claim of self defence on the first day of his jury trial and has admitted a stabbing in an incident in the city’s red light district last year.
Daniel William Taylor is now on bail awaiting sentencing in the Christchurch District Court on March 25 after pleading guilty to a charge of wounding a man with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
A charge of assaulting a woman in a separate incident two weeks earlier was dropped.
Judge Paul Kellar read Taylor a first strike warning under the system that imposes heavier penalties on repeat violent offenders before remanding him for sentence.
The Crown was calling evidence from 10 witnesses in its case about a stabbing in a carpark on the corner of Manchester Street and Aberdeen Street before 9am on May 18, 2013.
Taylor had claimed in his police video interview that it had been the stabbing victim who had produced the Bowie-type hunting knife during the confrontation they had, and he had wrestled the knife off him and ended up stabbing him. The knife has never been found.
Crown prosecutor Barnaby Hawes said Taylor acknowledged in the interview that he had been in a blind rage and had overreacted. But the Crown case was that he did the stabbing with a knife he had carried and produced during the confrontation. A witness told of seeing him with the knife beforehand.
Taylor had gone to Manchester Street that morning with a sex worker who was going to be working.
When he arrived he saw the stabbing victim parked in another car, with another sex worker who Taylor claimed owed him money.
Taylor approached the other car but the woman locked the doors, before Taylor began shouting and kicking the car. The stabbing victim – who Taylor knew – then got out of the car shouting at him to stop and go away, and the confrontation and stabbing followed.
The victim was stabbed in the chest with a wound that injured a lung, and in the buttocks, and in the hand – a cut that severed a tendon. Taylor had left by the time police and ambulance arrived to take the victim for surgery and a five-day stay in hospital.
Mr Hawes said at the start of the trial that it was up to the Crown to disprove self-defence. People were allowed to use “reasonable force” in defence or themself or another person.
Judge Kellar told the jury that the trial would involve them hearing evidence about drug use and prostitution but they must set aside all feelings of sympathy and prejudice.
Category: News
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