Ticketing grief over for driver
The days of Shaun Bartosh getting mystery speeding tickets have ended after police seized the car causing his grief in a drug raid in New Plymouth last week.
Bartosh, a retired professional driver from Levin, has been the proud owner of a lime green 2015 Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat since February, 2017, but in July he began receiving speeding tickets and driving infringement notices for a black 2017
Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat.
Although he had the notices can- celled, Bartosh appeared on Monday’s edition of
Fair Go to detail his ticketing ordeal.
It didn’t take long for viewers to recognise, and make the show’s producers aware, that the offending vehicle belonged to New Plymouth businessman Lauchlan James MacMillan.
MacMillan’s Hellcat was seized by police on Labour Day during raids targeting the sale and supply of methamphetamine.
The cars shared similar number plates – SRT707 – but Bartosh’s was a zero with a line through it and MacMillan’s was an O.
Bartosh said getting the tickets had caused him confusion
‘‘My driving record was clean up until then.’’ Shaun Bartosh
and concern. ‘‘It has been a bit stressful when you do get them cause you think, ‘Oh what?’. Especially with the first one because I was out in my car on that day.
‘‘My driving record was clean up until then and then I started getting these.’’
Bartosh, who drove buses in Wellington for 14 years, said he had speculated about the owner of the offending vehicle as they had incurred tickets around a large part of the North Island.
‘‘He was going around with tickets just outside of Ha¯wera, then getting tickets around Hamilton and then in Auckland, he was getting around a bit too much.’’
MacMillan, the owner of Taranaki’s Fowler Homes franchise, is facing seven charges of supplying methamphetamine and one of possession of methamphetamine for supply. He has been remanded in custody to appear in court on November 8.