Judge Russell Walker’s message to 53-year-old Reginald Robert Ozanne was simple.
"If you don’t want to attract attention, you should stop offending," he said.
Counsel Karlena Lawrence said her client had been subject to extensive vitriol, both online and in person, since making headlines in 2019 for stabbing Star the miniature horse 41 times in Waitati.
"It’s something he’s subject to on a daily basis ... he’s yelled at on the street," she said.
Publicising Ozanne’s most recent knife crime would result in a similarly venomous response, Ms Lawrence argued.
But Judge Walker said the application for name suppression fell "well short" of the threshold.
He described Ozanne’s behaviour on June 27 as having a "bizarre and intimidating element to it".
The defendant went to South Dunedin where he bought a grey camouflage pocket knife for $20 from a gun shop, the court heard.
Just a couple of kilometres away, at a bus stop in South Rd, he tested the weapon, cutting chunks out of a wooden power pole.
Ozanne then approached a woman from behind.
"The defendant made eye contact with the two others waiting for the bus, smiled at them and made stabbing gestures behind the back of the victim with the knife 3-4 times," a police summary said.
Police found Ozanne nearby in Hillside Rd and initially gave him a warning before opting to lay charges.
Ms Lawrence said her client had acquired the knife because he was going hunting at the weekend.
Ozanne told police at the time he "couldn’t wait until he got home to check it out".
The 2019 Waititi incident resulted him being sentenced to two and a-half years’ imprisonment, and he was released on parole in 2021, four months before the end of his term.
Ozanne has maintained he had no memory of the bloody mini-horse attack but accepted the evidence pointed clearly to him.
Despite the defendant’s notoriety in Dunedin, he had worked hard to put his criminal past — amounting to seven pages of convictions — behind him, Ms Lawrence argued.
Judge Walker noted Ozanne now had stable accommodation and employment where he was well regarded.
Ozanne was convicted of possessing a knife in public and threatening behaviour and sentenced to 90 hours’ community work.
The judge ordered the weapon be destroyed.
