{"id":79995,"date":"2025-10-15T12:39:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T12:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/79995\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T12:39:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T12:39:08","slug":"murupara-police-station-break%e2%80%91in-accused-sacks-lawyer-in-court-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/79995\/","title":{"rendered":"Murupara police station break\u2011in accused sacks lawyer in court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christiansen is alleged to have intentionally damaged<\/a> doors in the building, and to have threatened to do grievous bodily harm to a man in Thames.<\/p>\n

The defendant appeared surprised when lawyer Andy Schulze stood in court to speak for him.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe front door of the Murupara Police Station after it was smashed in March. Photo \/ Ben Fraser<\/p>\n

Christiansen interrupted Schulze and said, \u201cI\u2019ve tried to fire you twice and you keep turning up in court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schulze said he was not aware of this.<\/p>\n

Judge Anna Skellern jumped to Schulze\u2019s defence.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr Schulze did not know he had been fired because he\u2019s not in the habit of turning up when he doesn\u2019t need to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schulze was granted leave to withdraw as Christiansen\u2019s lawyer.<\/p>\n

The case proceeded with Christiansen saying he would represent himself.<\/p>\n

Crown prosecutor Anna McConachy told Judge Skellern about several legal points relating to an upcoming hearing in the case.<\/p>\n

Judge Skellern asked Christiansen if he understood what McConachy had said.<\/p>\n

Christiansen replied: \u201cNo, not at all\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh right, see that\u2019s going to be the problem for you\u201d, Judge Skellern told him.<\/p>\n

She remanded Christiansen in custody to reappear in court on December 5.<\/p>\n

Kelly Makiha<\/a> is a senior journalist who has reported for the Rotorua Daily Post for more than 25 years, covering mainly police, court, human interest and social issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christiansen is alleged to have intentionally damaged doors in the building, and to have threatened to do grievous…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1117,5811,61686,1647,1349,59567,78,296,20053,60502,111,43,139,1536,69,675,12622,29732,13655,107,37733,3382,6923],"class_list":["post-79995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-accused","tag-admitted","tag-breakin","tag-breaking","tag-court","tag-happening","tag-in","tag-into","tag-lawyer","tag-murupara","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-nz","tag-police","tag-sacked","tag-sacks","tag-station","tag-then","tag-understand","tag-using","tag-what"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79995","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=79995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}