stabbing him in the shoulder<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe victim instinctively put his hand up to his shoulder to protect himself, and Yardley stabbed the same area again, this time getting the man\u2019s middle finger.<\/p>\n
While Yardley then left the scene and phoned his probation officer, an ambulance was called and took the victim to the hospital.<\/p>\n
He suffered a deep wound to his shoulder, which had gone to the bone, and a deep wound to his finger. <\/p>\n
In court, defence lawyer Nathan Bourke acknowledged it was an unprovoked attack.<\/p>\n
He submitted it was a \u201chot-headed and angry\u201d response by Yardley, who was stressed about his living situation and was being told to \u201cessentially bugger off\u201d.<\/p>\n
Bourke said the attack was not premeditated, and questioned whether it was \u201cextreme violence\u201d, as stated by police, submitting it was two strikes and not gratuitously long.<\/p>\n
![\"Anaru]()
Anaru Yardley was sentenced in the New Plymouth District Court on Tuesday. Photo \/ Tara Shaskey<\/p>\n
He also questioned the seriousness of the victim\u2019s injuries within the realm of a wounding charge. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not minimising it for this gentleman, but he got some stitches and went home [from hospital] the same day,\u201d Bourke submitted. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very far from life-threatening; it wasn\u2019t surgery, it was sutures.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was prescribed some paracetamol and some amoxicillin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bourke said his client\u2019s background included family ties to the Mongrel Mob, which he said Yardley has tried to distance himself from following the birth of a child, and methamphetamine addiction issues. <\/p>\n
He said Yardley had shown \u201ca bit\u201d of remorse and insight, and he had phoned his probation officer after the attack to alert them to what he had done, which Bourke said was hopeful. <\/p>\n
Police prosecutor Lewis Sutton submitted the offending was premeditated, pointing out Yardley had taken the knife from his car before approaching the victim.<\/p>\n
While Sutton made written submissions describing the attack as \u201cextreme violence\u201d and resulting in serious injury, he conceded in court that he may have been \u201ca little bit hard\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy point there was that after the first stab, he had a second go,\u201d Sutton said, while also acknowledging the injuries were puncture wounds.<\/p>\n
However, he said the offending still featured the use of a knife and was unwarranted.<\/p>\n
\u2018You could have been up on a murder charge\u2019<\/p>\n
Speaking directly to Yardley, Judge Turitea Bolstad asked if he was fed up with being in and out of prison.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, nah, I am,\u201d Yardley responded. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou need to do something different, because you\u2019re still young.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI hear what Mr Bourke was saying, you know, you were homeless at the time and all of that, but you need to change all of that \u2018cos if you don\u2019t, those doors are just going to keep on swinging your way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yardley said he was looking to make positive changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can appreciate that I hear that all the time, eh?\u201d the judge responded.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019m going to do it, you know. That\u2019s the difference,\u201d Yardley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope so, I hope for your sake. \u2018Cos you know things could have turned to custard quite quickly,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could have stabbed him in an artery, and you could have been up on a murder charge, with no future prospects at all. So I hope what you tell me is genuine, \u2018cos you can\u2019t respond in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
In sentencing Yardley, Judge Bolstad said his criminal history included violence against family members and police, and a pre-sentence report noted his offending had escalated, and he was a high-risk of reoffending.<\/p>\n
She accepted that in the recent attack, Yardley had acted impulsively and no premeditation was involved. <\/p>\n
The victim\u2019s injuries were not of a serious nature and the attack did not involve extreme violence, the judge found.<\/p>\n
She took a starting point of 2.5 years\u2019 imprisonment before applying credit for Yardley\u2019s guilty plea, remorse, willingness to address offending behaviour and background issues.<\/p>\n
An uplift was then applied for Yardley\u2019s previous convictions before he was sentenced to 22 months\u2019 imprisonment on the admitted charge of wounding with intent to injure.<\/p>\n
He was granted leave to apply for home detention, and a first strike warning was issued.<\/p>\n
Yardley was also convicted and discharged for a breach of intensive supervision. <\/p>\n
Tara Shaskey is an assistant editor and reporter for the Open Justice team. She joined NZME in 2022 and has worked as a journalist since 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The victim told Yardley that he was not welcome and asked him to leave. Yardley got out of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,45451,12974,6741,1334,3958,809,117,111,43,139,69,49267,15163,169197,8218,1533,1339,169196],"class_list":["post-310606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-anaru","tag-change","tag-doors","tag-jail","tag-judge","tag-keep","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-plymouth","tag-stabbing","tag-swinging","tag-warns","tag-will","tag-without","tag-yardley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310606","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=310606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}