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Yee-haa! Dukes style raid on city car yard
It was an escapade worthy of the Dukes of Hazzard.
It involved a raid on a Moorhouse Avenue car sales, and a car jumped from a ramp to get it out of the yard.
One of the trio of offenders, 21-year-old James Clendon Symons, pleaded guilty in February and was sentenced to a year in jail.
The other two were found guilty at a fixture before Judge David Saunders in the Christchurch District Court today.
Tamal Edward McMeekan, 26, and Andrew John McHardy, 19, were remanded on bail for sentence on May 29 on charges of unlawfully taking one car and unlawfully interfering with three others in the car yard.
The group was in Moorhouse Avenue after midnight on October 1 where Symons went into a car yard and smashed the driver?s side window of a Subaru.
He started the car and as he manoeuvred it, he struck a Mercedes, knocking the bumper off.
While he reversed the car up to the workshop door, McHardy and McMeekan moved several large concrete pavers and arranged them to form a ramp over the low perimeter fence.
Symons then revved up the car and hit the ramp at speed to jump it onto the road.
He drove it to an empty section on Grafton Street.
The three then went back to the car yard and broke into three other cars, and started two of them.
While they were doing that, a member of the public saw what was happening. Symons ran off with the man chasing him.
They were found by the police soon after.
The car sales yard?s manager was called.
He arrived to find the escapade had caused $12,371 damage, and two of the cars in the yard had their motors quietly idling.
