Jail after threats to ‘rip apart’, eat exgirlfriend

A DUNEDIN man who threatened to eat his exgirlfriend and ‘‘rip her apart’’ has been jailed for a year.

But the time Damien Tehira Walters spent in custody means he will be released imminently, the Dunedin District Court heard last week.

The 29yearold broke up with the victim on April 15.

‘‘The defendant has not dealt with the split well,’’ a police summary said.

The next day, Walters told the woman he was going to pick up a firearm from an associate.

With that threat looming, in the early hours of April 17, he turned up at a South Dunedin home where his expartner was with a friend.

She heard banging noises and saw Walters approaching the house.

The victim hid in a bedroom while the defendant smashed a glass sliding door.

But before Walters entered, he went back on to the street where the woman had parked her car.

He kicked a door panel, causing it to cave in, and smashed two of the windows.

He did not find the victim at the address but began throwing her belongings from the house on to the pavement.

While doing this, he called the victim on her phone and said ‘‘he was going to kill her, eat her, waste her and rip her apart’’.

Walters’ departure from the scene was not the end of the woman’s ordeal.

He phoned her again shortly afterwards telling her he was going to return, shoot her, shoot at the house and at her home.

Walters pleaded guilty to two counts of intentional damage and one of threatening to kill as a result of the incident.

He also admitted a charge of cultivating cannabis.

When police were at Walters’ home they found a cupboard that had been converted into a minigrow room for the classC drug.

In it were six small plants and a larger one with ‘‘several large buds’’, the court heard.

Defence counsel Steve Turner said the defendant had paid for the damage he caused and compensated the victim further for the trauma she suffered.

He told the court Walters had been through residential rehabilitation at Moana House in 2014 and his offending — which spanned eight pages of convictions — had since slowed.

The man now accepted the relationship was over, Mr Turner said.

Along with the prison term, Judge John Macdonald imposed six months’ release conditions and made a protection order in favour of the victim.