A cellphone containing naked photos of an ex-girlfriend appears to be the target of robbery where the victim was lured into a trap by bogus Facebook messages.
The victim was attacked by two men with their lower faces covered, and one was armed with a bat, in the early hours of April 6, 2015, after he left his house on a bicycle to meet a fictitious girl.
The beating that followed left him with a gash to the top of his head which needed stapling, a graze to his hand, a sore jaw, and grazes to his head.
His cellphone was taken from him and tossed into the sea off the New Brighton Pier.
Three people have been prosecuted separately for the strange incident. One has received home detention, one is still to be sentenced, and the third, Brendon Grenfell, was today sentenced to intensive supervision, community work, and ordered to pay a share of the cost of the lost phone.
Grenfell, 24, has behaved well during 10 months on remand, effectively under house arrest at his grand-parents’ address in North Canterbury.
That, plus his apology to the victim at a restorative justice conference, led Judge Noel Walsh to decide against a term or imprisonment or home detention, at Grenfell’s sentencing at the Christchurch District Court today.
The chain of events began when a woman left one partner, and began dating another man, aged 22.
The woman sent the ex-partner a Facebook friend request in a fictitious name and then a request to meet her in a park.
The ex-partner left home on his bicycle at 3.30am on April 6, 2015, to meet her in the park on the corner of Memorial Avenue and Grahams Road.
When he got to the park, the woman did not arrive, so he went home, but four people were waiting and watching from a car parked in a side street.
The woman then sent another Facebook message, again asking to meet him.
He left home again and as he approached the car, two men got out with their faces masked. One was Grenfell and the other, who was armed with a bat, was the woman’s current partner.
Grenfell barged the victim off his bike, and the current partner struck him on the shoulder and the top of his head with the bat. The pair then punched, kicked, and stomped him.
When Grenfell tried to take the victim’s cellphone from his pocket, the current partner hit him on the hand. The partner then took the cellphone and bank cards and the pair ran to the vehicle.
The four then drove to New Brighton. The victim’s ex-partner gave them his PIN number so Grenfell used the bank card to withdraw $20 from his account at a money machine.
The current partner then threw the cellphone and bank cards off the pier.
Grenfell told police that the woman’s current partner had paid him $100 cash to help beat up the victim, and had also paid a $60 debt for him.
He told police the current partner wanted the phone because there were naked pictures of the woman on it.
Defence counsel Paul Norcross said Grenfell had been “confronted head-on” by the victim at the restorative justice meeting and had given a sincere apology.
Grenfell had admitted the charges of armed robbery and dishonestly using the bank card.
Judge Walsh said home detention was not technically possible at the grand-parents’ address where Grenfell was living.
He imposed year of intensive supervision with regular judicial monitoring and special conditions that Grenfell attend anger management and drug and alcohol counselling. He also ordered Grenfell to do 250 hours of community work and pay reparations of $406 – his share of the cost of the lost cellphone.
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