A Wellington man who binged on methamphetamine and alcohol in the days before he kidnapped a woman and beat her unconscious has been sent to jail for four and a-half years.
Myer Hepi Harrington appeared in Wellington District Court today for sentencing following the incident in July last year in which he spent days drinking and smoking methamphetamine before going to the home of a 21-year-old woman and repeatedly beating her.
He bound her feet and hands up, forced her to choose which form abuse she would receive, then beat her with a vacuum cleaner pipe before she fell unconscious.
The next morning she woke up and was able to get to her neighbour's house where she was taken to hospital.
Harrington had a string of criminal convictions and "an entrenched history of violence'', Judge Denys Barry told the court.
In 2000, as a 17-year-old, he admitted to invading a Naenae pensioner's home, slashing him with a machete and dousing him with boiling broth as he lay unconscious on his kitchen floor.
He was sentenced to eight years in prison for that crime, along with two other men who were jailed for seven years.
Sentencing Harrington today, Judge Barry said that between 2003 and 2011 Harrington racked up 35 convictions, including one in which he had assaulted the same woman. Harrington was on intensive supervision for that assault when the latest attack happened.
Late last year Harrington pleaded guilty to this latest assault.
Today he was sentenced to four and a-half years' imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of two years and three months.
Judge Barry also gave him his first strike, under the three strikes law.
