MacMillan faces driving charge
A Taranaki businessman arrested last week following a series of drug raids is also facing a dangerous driving charge, it can now be revealed.
Last month, Lauchlan James MacMillan, owner of the region’s branch of the building company Fowler Homes, appeared in court for allegedly driving at a dangerous speed along a Hawke’s Bay road on March 10, 2018.
He was granted interim name suppression in relation to the driving charge and remanded without plea. However, that name suppression has now expired.
Kevin Ronald Bishell, 37, of Waitara, has also been charged in connection to the driving incident.
It is alleged Bishell encouraged MacMillan to drive at speed. In an unrelated matter, Bishell has also been accused of killing a Taranaki teenager in a car crash in August. He was driving a Fowler Homes Taranaki vehicle at the time. Bishell has been charged with dangerous driving causing death, possession of cannabis, possession of utensils to smoke methamphetamine and refusing to give a blood sample following the State Highway 3 head-on crash which killed 18-year-old Olivia Renee Keightley-Trigg. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and elected trial by jury.
MacMillan’s dangerous driving charge was scheduled to be heard yesterday but has now been adjourned until November 8 when he is due to appear in court via audio visual link on the new drug charges.
He has been in custody since his arrest on Labour Day after the region’s organised crime group swooped on multiple addresses, seizing drugs, cash and vehicles.
MacMillan has been charged with seven counts of supplying methamphetamine and one of possession of methamphetamine for supply, to which he has yet to plead. Police cordoned off the Fowler Homes Taranaki offices, at the intersection of State Highway 3 and Corbett Rd, Bell Block, and seized his luxury sports car, a black 2017 Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, from an address in Fitzroy.