OFF THE WIRE
A Lone Legion gang member was found guilty of disorderly behaviour and unlawfully being in a yard after an altercation with a neighbour during a gang birthday bash last November.
After a defended hearing in the Blenheim District Court yesterday, Judge Tony Zohrab convicted 38-year-old Renwick contractor Michael Benedict McGlynn of the charges, but dismissed a charge of unlawful assembly for lack of evidence.
McGlynn was sentenced to 100 hours of community work.
The charges related to McGlynn going to Terrence Starkey's property in Stuart St, Blenheim, across the road from the Lone Legion Motorcycle Club warehouse, where the Blenheim gang was celebrating its 30th anniversary.
Mr Starkey told the court he made three calls to noise control during the weekend of November 26-28 about excessive and constant loud bass music from the warehouse. After the noise control officers left, the noise continued.
About midday on Sunday, November 28, two men – one of them McGlynn – sat on top of the warehouse fence and began hurling abuse and making gestures at Mr Starkey and his son while they were working on a car in their front yard, he said.
Mr Starkey said he went inside and phoned the police. He then saw McGlynn at his front door, and told him to "F... off", but McGlynn walked into the house.
"I didn't know what he had brought for me. He could have had a surprise for me."
Mr Starkey said he ran at McGlynn. Picking up a 1.7-metre wooden stick, he "gave him a full bayonet charge", hitting him in the stomach and lifting him off his feet and out the door on to the pavement in the front yard.
During a scuffle, McGlynn hit his head twice on a ute's deck and once on the propeller blades of an outboard motor, Mr Starkey said.
He said his 14-year-old son handed him a seven to eight-kilogram hammer, and he swung it at McGlynn, missing him.
McGlynn ran from the property and returned to the warehouse, and Mr Starkey did not see him again that weekend.
McGlynn told the court he knocked on Mr Starkey's door to introduce himself and to talk to him about any problems he had with the noise, when Mr Starkey came at him with a large hammer.
He was not there to cause trouble, he said.
"I'm not a thug, I'm not a bully or a standover person."
He denied that the attack took place near the outboard motor, despite police evidence of blood being found there.
Constable Paul Soper, of the Blenheim CIB, said he arrived at Stuart St about 2.50pm to find two patched members of the gang standing by the warehouse gate, one in the middle of the road and another trying to get into Mr Starkey's yard.
Mr Starkey was keeping the man at bay with a large stick, he said.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/news/5505816/Gang-man-found-guilty-after-fight
