A man has pleaded guilty to causing the hunting\u00a0death of\u00a0an\u00a0Otago man Jock Davies in\u00a0Stewart\u00a0Island and\u00a0can now be named.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ashburton man Paul William John Stevens, 39, pleaded guilty\u00a0in Invercargill District Court this morning\u00a0to carelessly using a firearm causing the death of Jock David Grant Davies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stevens\u2019 counsel Grant Fletcher entered guilty pleas on behalf of his client.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fletcher said Stevens was “more than willing” to undergo the restorative justice process with the victim\u2019s family.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr\u00a0Davies\u2019 family\u00a0were\u00a0present in the gallery.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last month police said they had charged a man for causing the death of the 21-year-old.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Court documents revealed today showed Stevens carelessly used a .308 rifle, causing the victim\u2019s death.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stevens is a builder from\u00a0Ashburton, and\u00a0was emotional after leaving the dock.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was remanded at large on bail until his sentencing in March.<\/p>\n
The hunting trip<\/p>\n
On July 5, emergency services were notified that the victim had been shot by a member of his own hunting party while in the remote Lords River area on Rakiura \/ Stewart Island .\u00a0<\/p>\n
A search and rescue team was sent to the island via helicopter, but\u00a0Mr\u00a0Davies was dead when they arrived.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr\u00a0Davies was from a\u00a0well-known\u00a0Tapanui\u00a0family and\u00a0had survived\u00a0two battles with\u00a0leukaemia.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was first diagnosed in 2013 and again in 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When the cancer recurred, the then 14-year-old stayed at Ronald McDonald House in Auckland for three months and received a bone marrow transplant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After his death, Clutha district\u00a0councillor\u00a0John Herbert said\u00a0Mr\u00a0Davies was a “bloody good guy”, and it was an “especially cruel” death after all he had endured.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s\u00a0just bloody horrible. No family should go through that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“What\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0been through, what\u00a0they\u2019ve\u00a0been through.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0not fair.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has pleaded guilty to causing the hunting\u00a0death of\u00a0an\u00a0Otago man Jock Davies in\u00a0Stewart\u00a0Island and\u00a0can now be named.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-185526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}