Jail for stealing dying man’s wallet
It will appear as just another conviction on Donald BridgePeacock’s criminal record, but this was no ordinary theft.
It was not like the numerous other convictions for theft or shoplifting from businesses that he claimed did not mean much to the victims.
This was different.
On October 18, 2017, the 26-year-old Napier man and his girlfriend stole a wallet from a man as he lay dying in a Waihi street.
The four-month jail sentence Bridge-Peacock got for that – and other crimes – doesn’t go far enough for the dead man’s family.
Bridge-Peacock and his girlfriend found Henry Pere unresponsive in the driver’s seat of his car. After helping others manoeuvre Pere to the footpath, where a passer-by started CPR, Bridge-Peacock and Nellie ButlerWhite took Pere’s wallet and cellphone. They snuck into a nearby alleyway, removed $80 cash from the wallet, then discarded it and the cellphone into a rubbish bin.
Pere died after being taken to hospital. Bridge-Peacock and Butler-White handed themselves in at the Napier police station days later after media coverage of the theft.
Pere’s family was still reeling from the shock of his sudden death when they found out his wallet and phone were missing, his nephew William Pere said, after the sentencing.
‘‘The lack of respect of robbing someone when he’s practically dead on the ground – after just helping him too . . . They helped him first and then they robbed him,’’ William said. ‘‘We couldn’t have cared less about the money but we would like to have buried him with his motorbike licence. He loved his Harley.’’
The Harley – which had been stolen the year before – had been Henry’s life, William said.
There were plenty of photos of it in the stolen phone, but the family ended up searching Henry’s home for shots to use at his funeral, and only found one or two.
William felt Bridge-Peacock’s sentence didn’t go far enough.
‘‘I just knew it was going to happen like that. I knew he wouldn’t get anything big,’’ he said.
‘‘I said from the start, when he gets caught he’s just going to get a slap on the hand.’’
Bridge-Peacock and his girlfriend moved to Southland and pleaded guilty to the theft in March, saying they had taken the money because they were hungry, homeless and had no money.
Since then, Bridge-Peacock had committed various other thefts and other offences in Gore, Wanaka and Napier.
Prior to being sentenced for the wallet theft in the Hastings District Court yesterday, he pleaded guilty to two shoplifting charges, adding to the three other charges of theft and one of possession of methamphetamine he had already admitted.
Bridge-Peacock’s lawyer Eric Forster told Judge Bridget Mackintosh that a prison sentence was inevitable given the further offending while awaiting sentence.
The judge said Bridge-Peacock had little insight into his offending and tended to rationalise the thefts by claiming they did not mean much to the businesses he stole from.
She acknowledged that BridgePeacock was motivated to find work and to be a good father to his children. She sentenced him to four months’ jail and remitted his outstanding fines.