Teen beat blind man after mistaken release from jail

A teenager who beat up a blind man after being mistakenly released from prison has had more than a year added to his jail time for the assault.

Shaun John Bolton, 19, of Blenheim, attacked the sight-impaired man in his home two days after he was released from Christchurch Prison.

An error had led Department of Corrections staff to believe he had only been sentenced to six months instead of a year.

He will serve out the remainder of his original sentence, and another 15 months for the latest attack, after appearing in Blenheim District Court yesterday.

Bolton's lawyer Phillip Watson said the victim in the assault was known to Bolton, who had attacked him in a "vigilante action" after accusations of impropriety between the victim and a teenage girl had been made.

Mr Watson said Bolton had been intoxicated when he had gone to the victim's address with the girl to confront him.

While he said Bolton punched the victim in the face, he claimed it was the girl, who will appear in Youth Court, who kicked him while he was down.

With the other six months of his original sentence on charges including assault and escaping from custody still to be served, Mr Watson asked Judge Tony Zohrab to consider a new sentence that ran at the same time as the first one.

But Judge Zohrab said they were "quite separate offending" and a cumulative sentence was warranted.

He also said there were a number of aggravating features in the case, including the facts that the victim of the assault was legally defined as blind, that the attack was pre-meditated and that the offending took only a few days after release from prison.

While he took Bolton's relatively young age into account, Judge Zohrab said he could not ignore the teenager's history of violence.

Leave to apply for home detention was denied.

- nzpa