Ex-Pike worker’s appeal dismissed

A man employed at the Pike River Mine when 29 men were killed in a series of explosions will not have his sentence for burglary reduced.

Ronald David Riddell pleaded guilty to seven counts of burglary, theft under $500, failure to stop for red-and-blue flashing lights and possession of a cannabis pipe.

He later appealed to the High Court to have his ‘‘manifestly excessive’’ sentence of two years and three months’ jail quashed but, in a decision released publicly yesterday, the appeal was dismissed.

Riddell had broken into rural farm properties to steal fuel and other property, worth $26,000 all up, over several days in January.

At Riddell’s sentencing on June

21, he received credit for his early guilty pleas and time spent on curfew while on remand, but district court Judge Gary MacAskill said there were no personal mitigating factors for further reduction.

Riddell appealed his two year, three month jail sentence in the High Court on the grounds that it was ‘‘manifestly excessive’’.

He said the starting point was too high and insufficient credit was given to his cooperation with police and mitigating factors.

Riddell’s counsel, Sunny TekiClark, said the starting point should have been three years imprisonment instead of three years and three months, referring to other High Court judgments.

Through his counsel’s submissions, Riddell referred to being an employee at the Pike River Mine on the West Coast at the time of the November 2010 disaster as one mitigating factor.

‘‘These significant life events may go some way towards explaining why a 33-year-old man with no previous convictions found himself before the court in

2012 on a total of seven criminal convictions,’’ Teki-Clark said.

In dismissing the appeal, High Court Justice Gerald Nation said he did not consider there were any personal mitigating factors the judge failed to take into account.

He also dismissed Riddell’s cooperation with police as grounds for further reducing his sentence.

Justice Nation opted not to change the sentence, saying the starting point was fair given ‘‘the nature of the burglaries, the number and the spree nature of them’’ and disagreed that the sentence was manifestly excessive.