{"id":485646,"date":"2026-06-19T16:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T16:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/485646\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T16:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T16:04:12","slug":"2005-assault-case-revived-as-70-year-old-john-thornton-reappears-in-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/485646\/","title":{"rendered":"2005 assault case revived as 70-year-old John Thornton reappears in court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Court staff were able to produce a copy of the original charging document, which showed a count of assault with intent to injure.<\/p>\n

Police told NZME that Thornton, who was born in Samoa, was charged alongside another person over an alleged assault in Henderson in July 2005.<\/p>\n

The co-defendant was discharged without conviction for the alleged attack, while Thornton, a former laundry worker, failed to appear in court, and an arrest warrant was subsequently issued in 2006.<\/p>\n

Attempts to locate him were unsuccessful and the file was inactivated, police said.<\/p>\n

However, he was \u201crecently dealt with\u201d by police, the file reactivated, and the warrant to arrest actioned. <\/p>\n

Thornton will next appear in court in August.<\/p>\n

His case follows that of Amanda McJarrow, who was recently sentenced in Whang\u0101rei<\/a> in a pseudoephedrine-to-methamphetamine case that is about 20 years old.<\/p>\n

McJarrow fled New Zealand ahead of her sentencing in 2007 but was arrested when she returned through Customs this year after being deported from Australia. <\/p>\n

Ella Scott-Fleming has been a journalist for three years and previously worked at the Otago Daily Times, Gore Ensign and Metro Magazine. She has an interest in court and general reporting. She is based in Auckland covering justice-related stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Court staff were able to produce a copy of the original charging document, which showed a count of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[66038,47118,806,17704,1121,1349,78,5126,111,139,69,126853,47670,213,60318],"class_list":["post-485646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-66038","tag-70yearold","tag-as","tag-assault","tag-case","tag-court","tag-in","tag-john","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-reappears","tag-revived","tag-sports","tag-thornton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485646","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=485646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}