Store roller door smashed<\/p>\n
The store front was wrecked when Lawrence twice reversed the car into the roller door.<\/p>\n
But the second time, he injured his co-offender, who was caught between the vehicle and the metal door, causing an injury that broke two of his front teeth.<\/p>\n
Once they had got into the store, the hapless pair tried to open the cigarette cabinet with a tyre iron and a hammer. <\/p>\n
Jett Lawrence was one of two men who attacked an innocent stranger who was in his car, reading and looking at the view on Te Mata Peak. Photo \/ Warren Buckland<\/p>\n
They were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
The would-be robbers left the store empty-handed. <\/p>\n
The victim\u2019s uninsured car, which they abandoned in Hastings<\/a>, was badly damaged and written off because he could not afford to repair it. <\/p>\n Some months later, in October 2024, Lawrence tried to sell a motorcycle on Facebook but the buyer recognised the bike as one stolen from a friend. <\/p>\n The would-be buyer and the legitimate owner turned up and took the bike back, but Lawrence jumped on to their flat-bed ute as they were taking it away and was driven down the street.<\/p>\n Lawrence smashed the back window of the ute cabin with a metal ramp, then kicked one of the men multiple times in the back of the head.<\/p>\n When the ute stopped at an intersection, he punched the man several times before a member of the public intervened. <\/p>\n Lawrence was sentenced in the Napier<\/a> District Court<\/a> to two years and seven months in prison on charges of burglary, converting a vehicle, demanding with menaces, theft, intentional damage assault with intent to injure and driving while suspended.<\/p>\n Appeal to High Court dismissed<\/p>\n He appealed his jail sentence to the High Court<\/a> but Justice Melanie Harland turned him down. <\/p>\n She noted the sentencing judge had said Lawrence could have faced a charge of aggravated robbery, which carried a higher sentence than demanding with menaces and car conversion.<\/p>\n Justice Harland also contrasted Lawrence\u2019s offending with his \u201cloving, caring and responsible\u201d family background.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is difficult to understand how this young man, with the family support that he has, has chosen a path in direct conflict with his wh\u0101nau values,\u201d Justice Harland said.<\/p>\n Lawrence\u2019s co-offender has been dealt with separately by the courts.<\/p>\n The case follows another recent one, in which two men were assaulted and kidnapped <\/a>in their car from another car park on Te Mata Peak<\/a>.<\/p>\n They thought they were going to die when a drug-using gang member they didn\u2019t know, Haylen Toi Tahau, 35, took over the driver\u2019s seat of their vehicle. <\/p>\n With them both still in the vehicle, he drove at speed towards trees and power poles and deliberately swerved into oncoming traffic, laughing and taunting his victims, before dropping them at the side of the road to Clive. <\/p>\n 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\u2019s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke\u2019s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lawrence approached the man with a tyre iron, took his cell phone and keys, and dragged him out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[95,4995,7793,24003,13912,3944,24000,24004,23999,24005,71,1976,42,24001,702,23996,23997,23998,43,90,13028,11923,11922,24002,8690,6110,1361,2846,8229,61,6382,40,38,41,39,13797,102],"class_list":["post-23244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-and","tag-away","tag-bays","tag-botched","tag-broken","tag-car","tag-clive","tag-coming","tag-commit","tag-emptyhanded","tag-from","tag-hawkes","tag-headlines","tag-innocent","tag-it","tag-jett","tag-lawrence","tag-mata","tag-news","tag-on","tag-peak","tag-raid","tag-ram","tag-stranger","tag-te","tag-teeth","tag-that","tag-them","tag-they","tag-to","tag-took","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-used","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23244","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=23244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}