“That really does have to stop.”
Judge Russell Collins sentenced Shane Timu to home detention and warned him not to come up again on violence charges. Photo / NZME
The names of the father and the neighbour were not mentioned in the court proceedings, but the fight happened on Folkestone Drive in Flaxmere about 8.50am on June 20 last year.
After becoming angry, the woman’s father picked up a wooden pole with a flag attached to it from the front garden and began attacking Timu’s ute.
Timu took a baseball bat from the rear tray of the ute and the pair faced off, yelling and arguing.
The victim left the property and Timu got into his ute and began to drive off.
The victim swung his flagpole at Timu as he drove past and Timu stopped and got out of the vehicle.
The pair struggled physically, yelling at each other, and Timu produced a knife from under his shirt.
He stabbed the man twice in the upper left leg and once in the back.
The neighbour, witnessing what was happening, ran on to the road, tackled Timu, wrested the knife from his hand and threw it over a fence.
Timu returned to the house, where he was arrested by police shortly afterwards.
The victim was taken to hospital with stab wounds and a collapsed lung.
Timu told police he had been acting in self-defence and only stabbed the victim because he had attacked him with the flagpole.
Sentenced to home detention
Timu pleaded guilty to a charge of wounding with reckless disregard, and Judge Collins sentenced him to 10 months of home detention.
He told Timu that people had died in similar incidents and, if that had happened, “you know the sort of charge you would have been facing”.
The judge noted that Timu had received convictions for violence or threatening to kill or do grievous bodily harm in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2025.
He had never had a prison sentence imposed, although he had spent just over a month in custody on remand for his current offending. He had also spent time wearing an ankle bracelet on electronically monitored bail.
Judge Collins said he could guarantee what would happen if Timu returned before the court for another violent offence, indicating a jail term would be imposed “as a matter of certainty”.
Timu will be subject to special conditions for 12 months after his home detention bracelet is removed.
These include not contacting the victim without permission from a probation officer, not using alcohol or non-prescription drugs, and doing programmes, including a non-violence course.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.