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Stanley Milne - Source: ONE News -
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A Taranaki man has gone on trial for allegedly shooting at a boy racer who was doing donuts in the street outside his house.
Police say Stanley Milne fired two bullets at the boy racer's car, hitting the boot and brake light.
Plantation Road in Egmont Village is a quiet, semi-rural cul-de-sac but boy racer behaviour drove one local resident to act.
"This case is essentially about the accused...taking the law into his own hands," prosecution lawyer James Gurnick says.
But defence lawyer Susan Hughes says it is a case of a decent working man and father of four "driven crazy by boy racers".
Milne and his family were asleep at 2am in May 2008 when he says he was woken by the sounds of Scott Wilson's car on the street outside his home.
The self professed boy racer, now 19, says he and a mate had been cruising that night. Wilson told the court he went up Plantation Road and was outside Milne's house when he did a donut, revving his accelerator and screeching his tyres. He then says he heard two loud bangs, like large stones hitting the back of his car.
Wilson says he found a 22 calibre bullet hole in his licence plate and another one near his boot.
Police claim Milne had shot at the car with a .22 rifle but the defence says Wilson must have planted the evidence because Milne didn't own a weapon of that kind.
"He did fire the slug gun, but not at the car. He did that to scare off the boy racers," says Hughes.
Milne has pleaded guilty to an unrelated charge of threatening to shoot another man he thought had been revving his motorcycle near his house the day before.
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