It came as no surprise to Marsters when Judge Clark told him he was going to prison.<\/p>\n
Tied up in home invasion<\/p>\n
The court heard that, about 4am on May 27, 2024, Marsters and three others wearing dark clothing and balaclavas broke into the elderly victim\u2019s home in Huntly.<\/p>\n
The noise woke the victim, who left his room to investigate.<\/p>\n
Marsters confronted him and, during the encounter, one of the intruders struck the man on the arm with a hard object, smashing his watch.<\/p>\n
The group then went into his bedroom and demanded his wallet and phone. <\/p>\n
Marsters stayed with the man and told him to lie face-down on his bed as his co-offenders searched his home with torches.<\/p>\n
When a co-offender told Marsters to tie him up, Marsters found a pair of shoes and used the laces to bind the victim\u2019s hands behind his back.<\/p>\n
The group stole the man\u2019s phone and took $310 from his wallet.<\/p>\n
The victim suffered a sore arm but did not require medical treatment.<\/p>\n
\u2018Quick, quick, run, run\u2019<\/p>\n
The assault on Marsters\u2019 partner happened on Valentine\u2019s Day last year after the pair began arguing at home.<\/p>\n
Marsters used his body to push her, causing her to fall to the ground outside their unit.<\/p>\n
He then grabbed her, pulled her to her feet and repeatedly told her, \u201cQuick, quick, quick, run, run\u201d.<\/p>\n
Walking aggressively towards her, he pushed her along a hallway with his body before forcing her through an open doorway towards the stairs.<\/p>\n
Zac Marsters was sentenced in Hamilton District Court.<\/p>\n
He then shoulder-barged her, causing her to fall down a flight of stairs and briefly lose consciousness.<\/p>\n
As she struggled to get back to her feet, he followed her down the stairs, continuing to yell, before pushing her down a second flight of stairs to the bottom of the stairwell.<\/p>\n
Realising she was injured, he asked a member of the public to call an ambulance and remained with her until police arrived.<\/p>\n
\u2018Look how remorseful I am\u2019<\/p>\n
Marsters attended a restorative justice conference with the home invasion victim.<\/p>\n
Defence counsel Glen Prentice told Judge Clark that Marsters \u201cobviously got a good talking to\u201d from him, and commented that he wanted to know where he would end up in 10 years\u2019 time.<\/p>\n
Prentice sought a discount based on a cultural report, which showed Marsters had been moved around frequently as a child.<\/p>\n
While he had performed well at school and found employment, Prentice said Marsters had ultimately fallen in with the wrong crowd.<\/p>\n
Crown prosecutor Kasey Dillon questioned the sincerity of Marsters\u2019 remorse, noting he had brought two unsigned letters to court.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a letter written by someone else and provided to the court to say, \u2018Look how remorseful I am\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
He argued the cultural report ultimately showed Marsters\u2019 offending was the result of choices he had made and the company he had chosen to keep.<\/p>\n
\u2018Very scary and traumatic\u2019<\/p>\n
Marsters had earlier accepted a sentence indication from Judge Clark on both cases combined.<\/p>\n
She adopted an overall starting point of eight years and six months\u2019 imprisonment before allowing a 20% discount for his guilty pleas because they avoided two separate trials.<\/p>\n
While Dillon had raised \u201ca fair point\u201d about the remorse letters, Judge Clark said she appreciated the sentiment behind them and wanted them passed on to the victims.<\/p>\n
She also noted the home invasion victim had been frank with Marsters during restorative justice.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s certainly someone who wants Mr Marsters to make better decisions and do better for himself in the future, but he didn\u2019t give Mr Marsters a free ride.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was the victim of what must have been a very scary and traumatic event.\u201d <\/p>\n
Judge Clark said it was easy to imagine the lasting impact on an elderly man of waking to find strangers in his home and being treated in such a way.<\/p>\n
She told Marsters it was \u201calways such a waste\u201d to see a young man jailed, but that he still had the opportunity to turn his life around after his release.<\/p>\n
After allowing a further 15% discount, she reduced the total sentence from 105 months to 68 months and sentenced Marsters to five years and eight months\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n
She also ordered him to pay the elderly victim $460 in reparation at a rate of $20 a week, with payments to begin 28 days after his release from prison.<\/p>\n
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 11 years and has been a journalist for 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It came as no surprise to Marsters when Judge Clark told him he was going to prison. Tied…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,806,46300,6097,2245,15453,1872,209,6540,10046,1345,10053,6655,296,152775,17702,247682,117681,1304,111,43,139,69,19719,134454,247683,16512,810,8844,102,69481],"class_list":["post-494773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-as","tag-broke","tag-down","tag-early","tag-elderly","tag-face","tag-group","tag-hand","tag-hands","tag-home","tag-house","tag-huntly","tag-into","tag-intruders","tag-invasion","tag-marsters","tag-masked","tag-morning","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-ordered","tag-searched","tag-shoelaces","tag-tied","tag-up","tag-victims","tag-with","tag-zac"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494773","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=494773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}