Judge warns about street violence dangers
A Christchurch judge has sent a warning about weapons and street violence, even while he was granting a home detention sentence for a double stabbing by a teenager.
“It has been reinforced so often about the dangers of people who carry knives in public because this is the very thing that happens when that kind of violence erupts,” said Christchurch District Court Judge David Saunders. “Someone reaches for the weapon and very often it can have fatal consequences.”
The courts were regularly seeing the impact of street violence where groups of young men were causing disorder. Just last week, an Invercargill teenager had been jailed for manslaughter for a “coward” punch that left someone dead in the street.
Before the court was Carlos Joel Shadbolt, 18, who had admitted two charges of wounding with intent to injure over an incident between two opposing groups that crossed paths in Warrington Street, St Albans, about 3.30am on March 19.
The victims were with a group walking along Warrington Street when Shadbolt and two associates were walking across the road, knocking over road cones.
The two groups did not know each other. Women with the victims’ group began yelling abuse at Shadbolt’s group and there was a confrontation in the middle of the road.
Fearing for his sister’s safety, the first victim ran at Shadbolt. He swung and missed but Shadbolt stabbed him in the abdomen with a small black pocket knife.
He collapsed and his sister confronted Shadbolt. As she went to hit him, he put his hand up and stabbed her in the arm, striking the bone above the elbow.
Shadbolt, unemployed, told police he had pulled out the knife because he was scared and defence counsel Phillip Allan said today that the judge should take self-defence into account, even though Shadbolt accepted he had gone too far.
Judge Saunders gave Shadbolt a first strike warning under the system that imposes heavier penalties if offenders commit further violent crime.
He said Shadbolt had caused serious injury to two victims who needed hospital treatment. The young man had come at him, swinging blows, but Shadbolt had responded by swinging at him with the knife.
He took into account Shadbolt’s age and his lack of previous convictions. People spoke well of him, and the incident was seen as out of character.
His hopes to do a Limited Service Volunteer course in October were unrealistic because of the sentence that would be imposed, but it might be possible next year.
He imposed an eight-month home detention sentence at his mother’s address, with a ban on consumption of alcohol or illegal drugs, and an order to do assessment, treatment, or counselling as required.
He also ordered him to do 150 hours of community work, and pay $350 emotional harm reparations to each victim, and another $117 to one victim for specific losses.
“For goodness sake, don’t go out of the house carrying a knife in the future,” he said.
Category: News
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