KEY POINTS:
A man charged with starting a multi-million-dollar blaze near Hastings while patrolling as a security officer was yesterday found guilty on three charges of arson.
A Napier District Court jury of seven women and five men deliberated for just 2 1/2 hours before delivering the verdicts against Peter Russell Eddy, 36, of Hastings.
The blaze at Hawke's Bay Fruitpackers Co-op storage facilities near Whakatu on December 22, 2004, caused damage worth almost $10 million.
Eddy was also found guilty of arson relating to two small fires at Mr Apple (formerly EEC Horticulture), a similar facility in Whakatu, on July 11, 2002, and June 23, 2003.
But he was found not guilty on a fourth charge of arson over another fire near the Mr Apple site in June 2002.
All four fires were reported between 1am and 2am, soon after Eddy arrived in the area as part of his routine patrols. He was the first on the scene in each case, and the fires all started in pallets of packing trays or wrapping stored outside.
He pleaded not guilty to all four charges when the trial started on Monday.
The jury was told that when he was first interviewed as a witness to the Fruitpackers fire, Eddy lied about his movements in the time leading up to when he reported seeing a "glow" coming from the vicinity of Fruitpackers just after 1.50am.
Faced with data from a global positioning system identifying his station wagon as going on to the site three times, at 1.17am, 1.41am and the time of the fire, he at first claimed it might not be accurate.
But later Eddy told Detective Glen Yule, of Hastings CIB, that he had gone to shoot rabbits at Fruitpackers, and lied because, as it was not on his list of calls, he should not have been there and feared he would be in trouble for carrying a gun in his vehicle.
Having said one rabbit fled under the pallets, he conceded to Crown prosecutor Clayton Walker that at that time, less than 10 minutes before reporting the fire, he would have been looking directly at where it was believed to have started.
But he said he saw nothing that indicated what was about to happen, and maintained his denials that he had lit any fires.
He was arrested just over five weeks after the fire, and further inquiries led to his being charged nine months later with the other fires.
Eddy was remanded in custody for sentencing.
- NZPA
