Judge calls for re-enactment of truckies’ dispute

Is there enough space to headbutt a person through the open window of a Kenworth truck?

A District Court judge took the unusual step of sending a truck driver back to his yard to get his truck so he could order a “re-enactment” of a dispute between two drivers.

Trevor Lindsey Shanks, 42, had a charge of assault dismissed in the Gore District Court in a judge-alone trial on Thursday after Judge Thomas Ingram said he could not rule out the possibility that he was acting in self-defence in an altercation with his former boss, Craig Abernethy.

The court heard there was ‘’bad blood’’ between the pair and Shanks said they were ‘’not friends’’.

Some text messages had been exchanged between the pair a month before the altercation about alleged dangerous driving by Shanks, which was not reported to police by Abernethy, the court heard.

On October 11, 2023, Abernethy was backing his Kenworth truck with a transporter carrying a digger down a driveway near an intersection on Hamilton St in Gore. Shanks drove past and performed a U-turn to confront Abernethy about a text he had sent him a month earlier.

Abernethy yelled at Shanks as he walked across the road. Shanks climbed up on to the drivers’ side of the cab of the truck, where the window was down, and a verbal altercation took place.

But from there, both drivers’ stories varied.

Abernethy said Shanks stayed outside the cab but reached in and punched him in the nose, causing him to be dazed. Shanks said he had been leaning partly inside the cab when Abernethy attempted to headbutt him, and he raised his hand in self-defence.

Judge Ingram questioned whether there was sufficient room with the window down for the altercation to take place.

He ordered Abernethy to bring the truck to the car park of the former Gore police station, where he, lawyers, police and court staff watched as each man showed how they had been situated when the incident took place.

Abernethy laid a complaint at the Gore police station on the night of the incident, but in his statement he said the altercation took place outside the truck and he had ‘’blurred’’ memory between Shanks coming up the side of the truck and him leaving.

That gave Judge Ingram cause for concern. He said there was no doubt that Abernethy had been hit.

However, he said it was ‘’impossible’’ to rule out the possibility that Shanks had acted in self-defence, and dismissed the charge.

Trevor Shanks shows how he says he was situated on the side of Craig Abernethy’s truck during an altercation between the two men. Judge Thomas Ingram asked for the ‘re-enactment’ of the incident, using the same truck, during a judge alone trial at the Gore District Court on Wednesday.