A man who sparked a three-hour siege in a North Shore suburb after appearing to shoot at a police helicopter was trying to get police to kill him, a court has heard.
Mark Christopher Brown, 50, was today sentenced to 23 months in prison after pleading guilty to assaulting three police officers using an air gun as a weapon and pointing a firearm at an officer. He also admitted injuring a police dog.
Brown had grabbed an air rifle and began cocking it and pulling the trigger in his home in Torbay after "losing control" on June 14. Police and the Armed Offenders Squad were called to the scene at Awaruku Rd, putting the area into lock-down.
He fired at police in an Eagle helicopter and at others on the ground, but it later emerged the airgun was not loaded and police found no ammunition at the property. However, the court heard that officers believed it was loaded at the time, and the sound it made as Brown pulled the trigger would have sounded like he was firing a live round.
Brown, who had already spent five months in custody for the incident, told the Parole Board that he had wielded the air rifle "in an attempt to get police to shoot [him] as part of a suicide attempt".
