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Scenes like these landed a group of boy and girl racers in a Christchurch court. -
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A boy racer who was involved in the ambush of a police sergeant a year ago has been warned that if he continues offending he faces a jail sentence.
Lewis John Garton, 18 unemployed, pleaded guilty in Christchurch District Court on Tuesday to threatening to injure a man with intent to intimidate in a separate incident.
The prosecution was told that he threatened a man with intent to intimate him in November last year.
Defence counsel Kerry Cook said Garton acted out of character because of personal issues that were going on in his life at the time.
He admitted the offence as soon as police agreed to drop a charge arising from the same incident, of having a wheel brace as an offensive weapon.
"This conduct does you little credit at all," Judge Jacky Moran told Garton. "You clearly completely lost the plot. I have little doubt it was alcohol fuelled and you were out of control.
"You need to understand that you are running out of options for the lower end of the sentencing scale."
If he continued offending, a jail term could follow.
Judge Moran told him she would have given him a sentence of community work, but the probation officer said he was already serving community work terms totalling 380 hours. The legal limit is 400 hours.
She fined him $500.
Garton was aged only 17 last July when he received a 240-hour community work sentence for his part in an incident where a police sergeant was ambushed by a lawless group of boy racers.
In the incident on January 30, 2009, boy racers blocked in the officer's car, bottles were thrown, and three air rifle pellets struck the window at head height. There were comments from the crowd saying to aim at the head.
