Drug rehab positive for defendant

Judge MJ Hunt said completing drug rehabilitation was a “very positive step,” when 30-year-old Jordan Alexander Silk appeared before the Kaitaia District Court for sentence.

He had earlier been convicted of common assault, driving with excess alcohol, refusing to accompany police and operating a vehicle causing a sustained loss of traction.

He was sentenced to four months’ community detention to be served in Helensville, where he now lives, and was disqualified from holding or obtaining a driver’s licence for 10 months.

According to the prosecution, Silk and his male victim, who lived at the same Kaitaia address, were drinking at a nearby address when they became angry with each other. Another person took the victim to his home, and the defendant followed him there two and a half hours later.

The pair met in their driveway, Silk put the victim in a choke hold and pushed him into a wall then threw him to the ground and searched him for cigarettes.

The victim was then picked up and thrown over a washing machine.

Silk drove back to where he had been drinking, after overhearing a phone call advising that someone there had a knife. He put about six children in the vehicle and drove off, stopping a short distance away where another person removed the children from the car. He then spun the car’s wheels on the grass berm.

The defendant, who four times refused to accompany police, subsequently recorded 808 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath.

Silk denied the assault, saying the victim must have suffered his injuries, cuts to his hands and head, in an epileptic fit.