Man's near miss with logging truck

Photo supplied

A mentally unwell man was almost hit by a logging truck as he wandered about the roadway of SH2 at Makaraka.

Several members of the public saw the incident at about 6pm on December 7 last year, and phoned police.

Two officers who went to the scene found the 46 year-old man still walking in the middle of the state highway towards Bell Road. He initially ignored their pleas to stop and kept wandering among the traffic.

When the officers tried to detain him, he swung a punch at one, narrowly missing the constable’s face. He put his hand inside the other constable’s mouth, dug his nails in, and squeezed for about five seconds. Each of the constables suffered cuts to their faces as a result.

On the way to the police station, the man told one of the officers he was going to get “the mob” to kill him.

His name has been withheld  due to his medical issues.

He subsequently pleaded guilty to assaulting police (laid under the Summary Offences Act), common assault (laid under the Crimes Act), and threatening behaviour.

He was sentenced in Gisborne District Court on Monday for those charges and an unrelated one of being unlawfully in an enclosed yard.

The unrelated charge happened the day after the traffic incident. At about 12pm, a Winter Street resident complained to police that the man was stomping around a paddock, yelling angrily. Arrested soon afterward, the man said, “I was just running with their dogs barking and stuff, I yelled ‘Seig Heil’ and called them ‘poofters’.”

Judge Warren Cathcart agreed with counsel Heather Vaughn a sentence of time served was appropriate, taking into account the 58 days the man was remanded in custody, his guilty pleas, mental health and history.