A burglar's month-long crime spree only ended when he was shot by a farmer. The sorry saga could have had an even worse ending. Herald senior journalist Kurt Bayer reports.
Jamie Clarke hadn't slept for days.
He had been sneaking all over South Canterbury at night, breaking into houses, sheds, businesses, cars, and community clubs, taking what he could.
Whatever he stole – tools, guns, eight vehicles - he traded for more methamphetamine. The stolen goods amounted to tens of thousands of dollars.
Getting more drugs was all he could see. His meth addiction was costing Clarke around $600 to $800 a day.
The 23-year-old was losing weight – a staggering 35kg in a month.
By the night of May 22, the pattern was long familiar.
Dressed in black, with a black balaclava on his head, he headed out under the cover of darkness.
Down Waipopo Rd, just north of Timaru, where expansive farmland rolls gently down to high cliffs overlooking the dark Pacific Ocean, he hit another farm.
A working farm with a main dwelling house, various sheds, garages and outbuildings, Clarke snuck around the place.
He pinched two toolboxes from the back of a Mazda ute before sliding open a kitchen window. The slight noise roused a sleeping dog inside, which barked and scared him off.
Clarke, who comes from near Geraldine in South Canterbury, ventured further down Waipopo Rd and inside another property. The farmer was away. Clarke smashed a large lounge window and crunched inside.
He went room to room, rifling drawers, cupboards and wardrobes.
During his search, he found the key to a firearms safe – and then the safe itself. He took all five guns inside: a single barrel shotgun, side-by-side shotgun, camo shotgun, camo .270 rifle, and .22 rifle.
He also discovered a steel box of ammunition which he tipped into a bucket found in the laundry.
A huge New Holland tractor was parked near the house. He got in, fired it up, and drove back into the night.
Clarke stopped at a nearby farm on Hides Rd and got out. He stuffed two guns under a hedge and two more along the fenceline inside the gate.
He took one of the shotguns, which he had loaded, with him into the property.
Vehicles were parked in the driveway. He checked the door handles and found a ute unlocked.
He laid the shotgun across the passenger seat and went looking for the ute's keys.
After entering through an unlocked back door, he switched on a hallway light and searched kitchen cupboards and drawers.
It woke the farmer's wife. She thought someone was inside the house, her thoughts flashing to her young son asleep in the sleepout. She nudged her sleeping husband: Somebody's here.
He got out of bed to investigate. Immediately he saw cupboards and drawers lying open.
The farmer – who the Herald has chosen not to identify – went outside and saw Clarke in his brand-new ute. He was backing out of the driveway.
He ran over and pulled open the passenger door.
Clarke, who had the black balaclava now pulled down over his face, picked up the shotgun and pointed it at the farmer.
"F*** off, I'll shoot you," he said.
Without thinking, the farmer, who spent all his life on farms and around guns, grabbed the weapon and tried to wrench it from Clarke's grasp.
They wrestled and fought. The farmer, thinking the barrel was clear, "intentionally discharged the two rounds in an attempt to make it safe", the police summary of facts says.
One of the rounds blasted into Clarke's hand from close range "causing a significant injury".
It allowed the farmer to get hold of the gun. Clarke rolled out of the ute and lunged to get it back.
There, in the farmyard in the middle of the night, they scrapped.
The farmer managed to swing the gun at Clarke, striking him on the head with such force it broke the wooden stock.
He held him down on the ground and waited for police to arrive.
Breathing hard, it was over.
The aftermath
Clarke was arrested and treated for his gunshot injury at Christchurch Hospital before he was taken to the city's men's prison.
When police officers interviewed him on July 29 last year, he admitted his offending.
He said the stolen property was bartered directly for drugs and used to fund his meth addiction.
Later, he would plead guilty to a raft of charges, including aggravated burglary, plus theft, gun and drugs charges.
He was sentenced at Timaru District Court last month to three years, nine months behind bars.
At the sentencing hearing, the farmer told the court how he ended up in a fight or flight situation that night.
"Some people have said what I did was foolish, but you just react, you have to look after your family," he said in a victim impact statement.
"It's really scary to think that someone can bring a loaded firearm to your property. You can't help but think of the 'what ifs' and how easy it would be someone could have ended up dead.
"I try not to dwell on what happened and run those what ifs through my head because I know it could have gone so badly."
He didn't expect the firearm to be loaded and says he only found that out after he pulled the trigger.
And the incident has left him deeply shaken.
"Being involved in something where you end up shooting somebody is something that I really struggled with," he told the court.
"The shooting is something I try very hard not to think about."
Glad it's all over
When the Herald approached the farmers last week, they were glad the court process was now behind them.
"We're all right, but we're keen to put it behind us," the farmer's wife said.
A restorative justice meeting with Clarke was productive. They got an understanding of Clarke's background and his terrifying descent into total drug addiction.
And it's been a real eye-opener into how destructive the drug is.
"I hope Jamie can come back from it," she said.
They believe that the dealers are the ones who should really be locked up.
"They are the root cause of it all and they seem to be avoiding any consequence," the farmer said in his victim impact statement.
"I thought we were in a safe community, but now I can see as a victim of this type of crime that I feel not enough has been done to curb it. I am now so much more aware of what the drug is doing to the community.
"This was an invasion of our private property. I still struggle coming to terms with the fact someone thought it was okay to bring a firearm on to our property."
