Four days in jail were an attitude-changing experience for 17-year-old boyracer Lewis John Garton, who has admitted his part in the ambush of a lone police sergeant.
His new attitude to life at home, at work, to his study, and his letter of apology to the sergeant he assaulted have kept him from a prison sentence, the Christchurch Court News website reported today.
Garton was held in custody after his arrest in February. "I was frightened by those four days in jail and I knew I had to make some drastic changes,'' he wrote.
"I never want to put myself or my family in this position again.''
He pleaded guilty in Christchurch District Court today and was sentenced to 240 hours of community work, disqualified from driving for 15 months, and ordered to pay Sergeant Nigel Armstrong $1000 at a rate of $30 a week from his part-time earnings as a car groomer.
Garton is now doing a full time course in automotive engineering, doing a day's work experience each week, and is being considered for an apprenticeship.
His family said he was no longer hanging out with the same lawless crowd that set up the ambush of Mr Armstrong - an incident that caused such outrage that the law has been changed to make life tougher for boy-racers.
Garton was caught by the contents of a text message, but he remained the only person charged over the incident, in which up to 300 people may have been involved.
Mr Armstrong was also shot at by pellets from an air rifle - they struck the windows of his patrol car at head height - but the shooter has never been found.
The police today withdrew a charge of being a member of an unlawful assembly and Garton then pleaded guilty to the charge of assaulting the sergeant using a bottle as a weapon, and dangerous driving from an incident near Kaiapoi on November 15.
A member of the public saw Garton driving a Nissan Skyline with a youth standing in the passenger seat with his body out of the car while drinking beer.
The passenger fell out as Garton accelerated hard and was almost run over as the car slid by.
Police prosecutor Sergeant John Taylor said Garton was at a gathering in Wigram Road on Friday night, January 30, with several hundred boyracers.
"They were carrying out their standard antics, pouring diesel on the road and doing burn-outs,'' he said.
The gathering effectively closed the road for up to 30 minutes and passing cars faced intimidation or damage from thrown bottles, kicks, and punches. Some were rocked up and down by the crowd.
The police were called and Sergeant Armstrong arrived to find himself the centre of an "entirely orchestrated'' attack, Mr Taylor said.
The boyracers blocked in his car, bottles were thrown, and three air rifle pellets struck the window at head height. There were comments from the crowd saying to aim at the head.
Text messages had arranged the ambush as the police arrived. One of the messages came to Garton, telling everyone to attack the police.
He ran up to the police car and smashed a bottle through the window which had already been damaged. The bottle struck the sergeant on the shoulder and showered him with glass.
Garton had been drinking and told police he threw the bottle because everyone else was doing it. He denied being the shooter.
Defence counsel Kerry Cook appealed to Judge Noel Walsh that not all the sins of the boyracer community be visited upon Garton.
"It was an out-of-character incident induced by pack mentality and lack of independent thought,'' he said.
Garton had abided by a bail curfew without problems since his release from custody in February. He had been vilified by the media and members of the Christchurch community, including death threats and hassles outside the courthouse. He had finished one community work sentence and was now doing another term of 140 hours to pay off $3000 in fines.
He was studying and working part time. Judge Walsh noted a letter from Garton's father which said his behaviour had been a nightmare for his parents. They reached the point where they had no option but to remove him from the house "because he had become so disruptive to family life''.
They continued to support him financially and emotionally as much as possible, and they had him back home on bail as the only way to get him out of jail during the remand.
Judge Walsh said Garton appeared to be making a genuine effort to turn himself around and do something constructive with his life.
He read out parts of the letters from his parents and from Garton's apology to the sergeant.
"I am well aware that certain sections of the community would be only too pleased to see you sentenced to a further term of imprisonment,'' he told the youth. But he said that would be a "retrograde step'' in view of the efforts Garton had made.
Without those efforts, Garton would have been looking at a jail term. Garton accepted that the ambush had caused emotional harm for the sergeant and there should be an emotional harm payment, which the judge set at $1000.
