Road rage appeal lost

A MAN who assaulted and wounded another man during a road rage incident at Dodges Ferry in 2016 has lost his appeal against his sentence.

Christopher David Jenkins pleaded guilty to two counts of assault and one count of wounding and was sentenced in the Supreme Court in Hobart in July.

The court heard Jenkins and his brother Nicholas Tyson Wallner were driving in Dodges Ferry on July 7, 2016, LORETTA LO LOHBERGER LO when a van driven by Trevor Grigson turned into their path.

Six days later the brothers were driving in the area again and saw Mr Grigson, followed him closely and flashed the high beam headlights at him.

Mr Grigson stopped and Jenkins approached him and punched him. “Rather oddly, the complainant then reversed his car into Wallner’s, later claiming that he did so in order to ‘mark’ the car for later identification,” Acting Justice David Porter said in the Court of Criminal Appeal decision handed down on Thursday.

Acting Justice Porter said Mr Grigson then drove off towards a friend’s house and Jenkins and Wallner followed.

The court heard Jenkins struck Mr Grigson with a metal pipe outside the friend’s house.

Jenkins, who has prior convictions in Tasmania and NSW, was sentenced to 2½ years in jail, with a non parole period of 18 months.

The sentencing judge described the violence as “brutal”.

Wallner, who had no relevant prior convictions and was found to have played a lesser role in the crimes, pleaded guilty in December to one count of assault and one count of wounding and he received a 12-month suspended sentence.

The grounds of Jenkins’s appeal related to the parity between the two offenders’ sentences and what he said was “erroneous material” regarding his prior convictions in NSW that the judge relied upon.

Acting Justice Porter said neither ground of Jenkins’s appeal was argued successfully.