Brothel fee feud hit-and-run
A feud over who should pay at a Hamilton brothel led to one of the three combatants deliberately mowing down the other two in his car.
Stephen Anthony Hewitt, 36, of Deanwell was sentenced to eight months of home detention when he appeared in the Hamilton District Court on Monday on charges of injuring with intent to injure and assault with a weapon – namely his Nissan Skyline.
The incident happened at 3.30am on Thursday, December 6, last year after Hewitt met two men aged 40 and 24 – and with whom he was previously unacquainted – at a Hamilton bar.
After some time at the bar, Hewitt drove his two companions to California Girls, a brothel in Tristram St.
As the summary of facts on the case puts it, Hewitt’s two companions were under the impression that they would be getting ‘‘free services’’, thanks to his connections with the brothel.
But it soon became clear that the situation was not what the two had been led to believe, and they would have to pay. Whether this friction arose before or after use of the premise’s services, however, was not made clear in the summary.
The pair decided to leave and told Hewitt ‘‘to forget about it’’.
This made Hewitt see red. He followed the pair and soon he and the younger man began fighting.
The altercation was brief and the pair disengaged and began walking away down Tristram St.
They had not gone far when they heard the sound of loud revving. Turning, they saw Hewitt bearing down on them in his Skyline.
He hit the older man head-on, the impact throwing him up in the air.
The younger man managed to get out of the way just in time, the car giving his arm a glancing blow as it passed.
The man who had been hit head-on could not move his leg so his companion dragged him off the road and into a garden, where they hid behind a pair of large boulders.
As they hid, Hewitt drove back and forth looking at them, and screaming out the window.
‘‘Where the f... are you?’’ he yelled. ‘‘I’m going to find you! I’m going to run you the f... over!’’
Eventually, he drove off and the younger of the two victims flagged down a passing ambulance.
The man who bore the brunt of the impact had suffered numerous injuries, including a heavily swollen left knee, calf and ankle, deep bruising, ligament damage and grazes. His companion got away with a slightly swollen elbow and minor grazing to his leg.
When the police caught up with Hewitt he had his own version of what happened.
The pair had attacked him outside California Girls. They had walked off and, after calling out to them as he passed by, he had driven home.
He had also discovered on that journey that his left tyre was flat, and driving home on a flat tyre was the reason that his ‘‘actuators’’ under his bonnet had been set off.
However Hewitt eventually pleaded guilty in April to the charges and, following some delays to have a suitable address located, he was sentenced on Monday.
In court, Hewitt’s counsel Glen Prentice said he acknowledged he had made a bad mistake and the violence was out of character.
Judge Kim Saunders noted the lack of a recent statement attesting to the status of the main victim.
‘‘I can take it from the absence of any lasting information that there has been no lasting damage.’’
‘‘I can take it from the absence of any lasting information that there has been no lasting damage.’’