Man jailed for burning, shooting daughter

A Taranaki man has been jailed for four months for shooting his eight-year-old daughter with an air rifle and burning her with a cigarette lighter

Phillip Andrew Benge, 27, was sentenced in Hawera District Court yesterday are earlier pleading guilty to recklessly discharging a firearm, The Taranaki Daily News reported.

Benge and a group of others had been shooting an air pistol and an air rifle at targets at the house where he lived with his partner when a pellet hit his daughter on the heel.

"Why on earth a grown man would be firing a weapon with a child present defies any reasonable explanation," Judge Allan Roberts commented.

On another occasion, Benge burned her on the arm with a cigarette lighter.

In her victim impact statement to the court, the girl wrote written: "I was sad when dad burnt me on the arm. But things are alright now."

- NZPA