High Court at New Plymouth<\/a>.<\/p>\nAt the sentencing, Justice Paul Radich described Hannon, who was not present when Bridson died, as having engineered his death.<\/p>\n
The court heard that on August 24, 2023, Bridson and Hannon had an argument.<\/p>\n
Two days later, Hannon visited Bridson at his home, and while there, was attacked by Bridson.<\/p>\n
He pushed Hannon to the ground, smashed an empty bottle over his head and threatened to kill him.<\/p>\n
Hannon left the property with moderate injuries and, due to the altercation, became afraid of Bridson and preoccupied with his movements and behaviour.<\/p>\n
Then, on the evening of October 10, Bridson was drunk at his home.<\/p>\n
![\"Mathew]()
Mathew David Hannon has been sent to prison for his role in the death of Sidney Ross Bridson.<\/p>\n
For reasons unknown, Bridson smashed the windows of a vehicle he had purchased that day and set fire to it.<\/p>\n
Hannon, who had heard Bridson yelling and saw that he had started a fire, phoned one of his co-defendants.<\/p>\n
Early the next morning, the co-defendants arrived at his home, where Hannon gave them a shotgun and ammunition. <\/p>\n
It is alleged the co-defendants then murdered Bridson and set fire to his house.<\/p>\n
In court, Crown prosecutor Jacob Bourke sought a starting point of eight to 10 years\u2019 imprisonment for Hannon, while defence lawyer Paul Keegan, KC, argued six years, six months was appropriate.<\/p>\n
Bourke submitted that Hannon\u2019s offending featured an element of vigilantism.<\/p>\n
He said that while Hannon was not present when Bridson died, he had provided the firearm and ammunition.<\/p>\n
Keegan acknowledged Hannon\u2019s reckless actions and the harm that transpired.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe decision to supply a loaded firearm in these circumstances is acknowledged to be extremely foolish, criminal and tragically fatal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Justice Radich acknowledged Bridson\u2019s loved ones, who had described him as caring, intelligent, a \u201cfantastic\u201d father and uncle, a mentor and a talented craftsman.<\/p>\n
The family had labelled the neighbour\u2019s conflict as a \u201cpetty feud\u201d, and said Bridson had been lost to \u201ca dark, ugly night that went horribly wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n
They now cherished \u201cprecious memories\u201d of camping, fishing and hunting trips at Waitaanga where the family had visited Bridson for 20 years.<\/p>\n
Justice Radich accepted Hannon\u2019s actions were vigilante in nature, and, while he was not at the crime scene, his role was serious.<\/p>\n
\u201cEssentially, you engineered the events that followed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Justice Radich took a starting point of seven years and six months\u2019 imprisonment before allowing credit for Hannon\u2019s guilty plea and remorse.<\/p>\n
Hannon was sentenced to five years and three months in prison and was banned from owning firearms.<\/p>\n
Tara Shaskey joined NZME in 2022 and is currently an assistant editor and reporter for the Open Justice team. She has been a reporter since 2014 and previously worked at Stuff covering crime and justice, arts and entertainment, and M\u0101ori issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a lengthy police investigation, Hannon and two other men were charged with murdering the 55-year-old. Mathew David…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,634,52785,2082,52784,692,42,15035,52783,3244,43,5161,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-65192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-death","tag-engineered","tag-for","tag-hannon","tag-he","tag-headlines","tag-manslaughter","tag-mathew","tag-neighbours","tag-news","tag-sentenced","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65192","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=65192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}