Home detention for red-zone chase

Andrew Shaw made a desperate dash through the red zone after a building site burglary, but was later caught on the roof of a house.

The 32-year-old was sentenced in the Christchurch District Court yesterday to five months’ home detention, disqualified from driving for nine months and will have to do 180 hours of community work – 80 hours of it imposed in place of his $3283 backlog of unpaid fines.

He will have to pay for the damage he did to red zone fences, a house under construction and the unlawfully taken car he was driving as he tried to flee police.

Shaw had admitted burglary of a shipping container, dangerous driving, failing to stop for police, driving while prohibited and unlawfully getting into a car.

Defence counsel Ruth Harcourt said Shaw’s compliance during nearly seven months on electronically monitored bail had been ‘‘impeccable’’. He had struggled to get work without a driver’s licence, but his commitment to work during his sentence had never wavered.

Judge Tom Gilbert said Shaw had ‘‘an unhappy driving history – and that’s putting it generously’’ as well as dishonesty convictions on his record. But he had received a positive report from probation and his sentence would be reduced because of his compliance while on bail and time spent in custody before that.

The car was taken from outside a Papanui address on February 18.

Two weeks later, about 4.30am on March 3, Shaw broke into a locked container at a building site in Evelyn Couzins Ave, Richmond. He took a large number of tools including nail guns, generators, post-hole borers and $15,000 ladders and loaded them into the Toyota.

He drove away, but police had been alerted to the suspicious behaviour and saw him stopped at a red traffic light nearby at the corner of North Parade and North Avon Rd.

When the police car used its lights and siren, he sped away at 80 kilometres an hour, with his headlights off, and drove on the wrong side of the road.

He drove through a red light on North Avon Rd at 50kmh, and then turned onto Evelyn Couzins Ave where he drove at speed through empty sections and crashed through fences securing the red zone area.

He lost control on Medway St before abandoning the car and fleeing on foot. Police caught him soon after on the roof of a house. He was found with a balaclava and two pairs of gloves.

The stolen tools were recovered.