A judge says he is sick of shoplifters using the cost of living in the Queenstown Lakes as an excuse for \u201cpillaging supermarkets\u201d.<\/p>\n
Judge Russell Walker\u2019s comments came while he was sentencing Joseph Roger Windall, 19, on 12 charges of theft from W\u0101naka\u2019s New World Three Parks supermarket.<\/p>\n
Windall\u2019s lawyer, Megan Waller, said the British national had travelled to New Zealand in May with his girlfriend on a working holiday visa, and they had underestimated the cost of living in W\u0101naka.<\/p>\n
It had then taken him a while to find work, but he was now employed as a carer.<\/p>\n
The defendant and his girlfriend had been experiencing financial hardship, and he had been \u201cstealing to eat\u201d, Ms Waller said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wasn\u2019t stealing luxuries, it was for the most part out of necessity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Convictions were likely to jeopardise Windall\u2019s ability to remain in the country, and affect his ability to apply for visas in other countries, such as Australia, she said.<\/p>\n
However, Judge Walker said he was tired of hearing the cost of living as an excuse for shoplifting.<\/p>\n
The \u201cmost rudimentary Google search\u201d would tell anyone the cost of living in W\u0101naka or Queenstown was higher than other parts of the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the result comes back with the word \u2018exorbitant\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
The defendant had \u201crepeatedly plundered\u201d the supermarket on 12 occasions between July 14 and August 10, using the same method to steal items with a total value of $259.98.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people, Mr Windall, particularly families, are finding times really tough at the moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time you go and steal from a supermarket, you simply make it more expensive for those honest families to buy groceries for their children.\u201d<\/p>\n
He entered the 12 convictions and sentenced Windall to 90 hours\u2019 community work and ordered him to pay back the value of the stolen items.<\/p>\n
He also imposed a deferred sentence of 12 months, which means if Windall is charged with any dishonesty or shoplifting offences in that time, he risks going to prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A judge says he is sick of shoplifters using the cost of living in the Queenstown Lakes as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-585154","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\/585154","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=585154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}