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Fairy tale ending to police investigation
Offenders who stripped and torched a stolen car had never read the story of Hansel and Gretel, apparently.
The trail they left behind made it just too easy for the police investigators.
One of those involved, 21-year-old Jesse Allen Johnson, has been given a four-month community detention sentence and ordered to pay $2000 reparations to the car owner.
Christchurch District Court Judge David Saunders said the drag marks the offenders left behind made it ?a bit like Hansel and Gretel?.
The offenders convinced Johnson to let his property be used to strip the car.
When the job was done, the vehicle wasn?t moveable but they hitched it up and dragged it off the property and around the corner where one of them set it on fire. It was burnt out.
Police simply followed the drag marks back along the road and up the driveway to Johnson?s property.
Johnson pleaded guilty to charges of taking the car, and being a party to the arson ? he wasn?t the one who torched it.
Judge Saunders said Johnson was now working as an apprentice arborist. He had a young child and a pro-social and supportive partner.
?You have everything to live for and work for,? said the judge, warning that it would all go ?down the gurgler? if he reverted to old associations that led him back into offending.
