A 21-year-old who fatally stabbed a man in Momona may yet avoid a spell behind bars.
The defendant, who appeared by video link from Invercargill, was originally charged with murder but yesterday in the High Court at Dunedin it was amended to manslaughter, prompting a guilty plea.
Justice Cameron Mander called for a Probation report which would consider the viability of home detention, but prosecutor Craig Power said the Crown would argue imprisonment was the appropriate outcome at next month’s sentencing.
The court heard the bad blood began with a road-rage incident in Mosgiel in the week leading up to the stabbing.
The defendant, who has had name suppression since his first appearance in court, mistakenly believed a 22-year-old neighbour was behind the wheel of the other vehicle and on October 15 last year confronted the man’s mother as she walked a dog, swearing and yelling at her, leaving her upset.
The man gave her a "threatening message" to pass on to her son about what would happen should a similar incident arise in future.
When the woman got home and told her husband about the incident, he and their son went to see the defendant.
"Right, I am going to sort this out," the victim said before he left.
After seeing them arrive, the defendant, who had been clipping his hedge, ran inside the house and grabbed a 20cm kitchen knife from a drawer.
A heated argument ensued.
"They were a few metres apart and were yelling at each other," the court heard.
The victim told the man he had been wrong about the earlier driving accusations and urged him to put down the weapon.
The victim’s brother and a woman entered the scene but left before the violence erupted.
When the defendant backed off inside his home, waving the knife in front of him, the pair followed.
The victim armed himself with an aluminium broom and hit the man with it a few times until the head of the implement fell off.
His son threw a terracotta pot, which hit the man in the back.
After being cornered, the defendant was "swinging the knife around wildly", lunging with the blade two or three times, the court heard.
One of them wounded the victim in the stomach and he collapsed on the grass, metres away.
"I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, it hurts," he said.
The defendant and others called an ambulance but the victim could not be saved.
A post-mortem showed the 10cm-13cm-deep wound partially cut a vein and ended in the spine.
The defendant immediately admitted to police he had stabbed the victim and said "I warned them".
He claimed to have stated 10 times that he did not want to hurt the men.
"The defendant said he was scared he was going to get his head caved in and was terrified they were going to beat him up and try to take the knife from him and use it on him," police recorded.
The defendant will remain on bail until sentencing.
rob.kidd@odt.co.nz , Court reporter
