The 57-year-old, who has interim name suppression, was to have had a trial callover hearing in the High Court at Whang\u0101rei on Friday.<\/p>\n
However, at the request of Crown prosecutor Richard Annandale, the hearing was rescheduled to early December.<\/p>\n
He said that was to give psychiatrist Erik Monasterio time to work on a report examining “the issue of insanity”.<\/p>\n
Annandale said the extra time was needed because Dr Monasterio had much to do.<\/p>\n
“The expert is a busy expert and has a large number of matters to attend to,” he said.<\/p>\n
The judge set a new callover date in December to monitor progress on the report.<\/p>\n
A jury trial date had already been set for 5 July next year.<\/p>\n
The accused was represented by Sharlene Pilkington, acting for high-profile Whang\u0101rei lawyer Arthur Fairley.<\/p>\n
Monty Knight died at his home near Kait\u0101ia in November last year. He had recently turned 80.<\/p>\n
Ever the entrepreneur, Knight started his retail career with a record shop on the town’s main street, then expanded into electronics, appliances and beds.<\/p>\n
He took over the family business, Knights the Jewellers, and opened a second outlet in Kerikeri.<\/p>\n
When told it was impossible to grow grapes in Kait\u0101ia, Knight proved the doubters wrong by establishing an award-winning winery, Okahu Estate.<\/p>\n
He was inducted into the Northland Business Hall of Fame in 2010.<\/p>\n
Knight was elected to the Far North District Council in 2010 and the Northland Regional Council in 2015, and ran for the Far North mayoralty a number of times.<\/p>\n
He had another tilt at winning a seat on the Far North District Council in the 2025 local elections.<\/p>\n
Tributes after his death described him as “relentlessly optimistic”, “a serial entrepreneur” and an unwavering champion for his home town of Kait\u0101ia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 57-year-old, who has interim name suppression, was to have had a trial callover hearing in the High…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":561849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-561848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561848","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=561848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/561849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}