SPCA inspectors<\/a> attended Little\u2019s address in the days that followed, along with two police officers, and Little confirmed he was the man who had been complained about.<\/p>\nHe asked if they wanted to see what he had used to hit Marama, before retrieving a \u201csmall plastic dust pan and brush\u201d, which he threw on the ground.<\/p>\n
The dog was taken away and examined by a vet, and was observed avoiding placing full weight on her right hind limb. She flinched when patted on her left shoulder, back and hip, and had skin discolouration indicative of bruising.<\/p>\n
\u2018So fearful … they fled into a room\u2019<\/p>\n
Then, in June of this year, Little\u2019s violence extended to his daughter and ex-partner.<\/p>\n
He became verbally abusive, and after the pair hid in a bedroom, he broke the door down with a pool cue.<\/p>\n
As his daughter tried to stop him from assaulting her mother, the 47-year-old put his hands around her neck and punched her to the right side of the ribs, and to the side of her face.<\/p>\n
Then he kicked her in the ribs.<\/p>\n
Judge Bill Lawson noted this \u201cwas all while she was trying to protect her mother from an attack by you\u201d.<\/p>\n
This led to Little being charged with assault with intent to injure.<\/p>\n
The judge said the assault happened in a family home where the victims were \u201centitled to feel safe\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth [your daughter] and her mother were so fearful of you, they fled into a room and tried to lock the door, and you broke your way into that room.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ill-treatment of the dog had been \u201ccallous and cruel\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cClearly, your dog was seriously injured, and you, when asked to reconsider your behaviour, told people involved to mind their own business,\u201d Judge Lawson said.<\/p>\n
Judge Lawson noted Little had previous convictions that included a family violence conviction for wounding with reckless disregard, four convictions for assault with intent to injure, and one conviction for assaulting police. <\/p>\n
The court heard Little had also received an earlier written warning from the SPCA, after it received video footage of the man using an object to strike a puppy around its head and neck area.<\/p>\n
A pre-sentence report assessed the man as having a \u201chigh risk of reoffending\u201d, and the judge said his comments to the report-writer appeared to be trying to justify what he had done.<\/p>\n
\u201c[You said] the door was slammed in your face and your toes got jammed in the door. As a result of that, you got angry and then reacted to that anger,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n
However, Little also said he was ashamed of himself and his behaviour, and was remorseful and willing to engage in rehabilitation programmes.<\/p>\n
The judge adopted a starting point, for both sets of offending, of 16 months\u2019 imprisonment. <\/p>\n
The man was given a 20% discount for his guilty plea, having initially pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n
He was given a further 5% discount for background and remorse. <\/p>\n
After those discounts were applied, Little was given a two-month uplift for his previous convictions.<\/p>\n
He was given an end sentence of 14 months\u2019 imprisonment, with six months\u2019 standard release conditions.<\/p>\n
On the charge of ill-treatment of an animal, Little was disqualified from owning a companion animal for five years, and was required to forfeit any current ownership of a companion animal.<\/p>\n
He was ordered to pay $198 reparation for vet costs, and a \u201cminimal\u201d $250 contribution to legal costs, because of his personal financial circumstances.<\/p>\n
Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The dog was seen whimpering, yelping and scurrying backwards as she was being hit to the body and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13735,3648,17704,32034,89,120565,97742,14032,36473,1359,9219,2082,120564,3958,3242,9933,6093,5158,111,43,139,69,90,30619,5161,94927,10505,1227,2766,102],"class_list":["post-194428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-actions","tag-animal","tag-assault","tag-assaulted","tag-attack","tag-callous","tag-cruel","tag-daughter","tag-dean","tag-described","tag-dog","tag-for","tag-hawaiki","tag-judge","tag-large","tag-later","tag-little","tag-man","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-repeatedly","tag-sentenced","tag-shovel","tag-square","tag-tauranga","tag-treatment","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194428","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=194428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}