A Taranaki man has been jailed for four months for shooting his eight-year-old daughter with an air rifle and burning her with a cigarette lighter
Phillip Andrew Benge, 27, was sentenced in Hawera District Court yesterday are earlier pleading guilty to recklessly discharging a firearm, The Taranaki Daily News reported.
Benge and a group of others had been shooting an air pistol and an air rifle at targets at the house where he lived with his partner when a pellet hit his daughter on the heel.
"Why on earth a grown man would be firing a weapon with a child present defies any reasonable explanation," Judge Allan Roberts commented.
On another occasion, Benge burned her on the arm with a cigarette lighter.
In her victim impact statement to the court, the girl wrote written: "I was sad when dad burnt me on the arm. But things are alright now."
