Man burnt in petrol blast while at Napier home on e-bail

The scene in Taradale in November last year after a man was badly burnt in a petrol explosion, while at home on electronically-monitored bail. Photo / File

A man badly burnt in a petrol explosion in Taradale was at the time on electronically monitored bail after taking a ute from a woman who stopped to help after he crashed while driving the wrong way on a motorway near Upper Hutt.

The detail unfolded as 32-year-old Randall Grey appeared before Judge Bridget Mackintosh in Napier District Court on Thursday, for sentencing which had been delayed a year because of the burns he received to 55 per cent of his body in the Saturday-afternoon fire in a garage on a property in King St, Taradale, last November.

Grey fled the property screaming and ran several hundred metres before being subdued by members of the public. He was flown critically ill to hospital in Auckland and was in an induced coma for four of his five weeks in intensive care, defence counsel James Ranger revealed in court, where Grey sat in a wheelchair, expecting to face possibly several years more in his recovery.

It was also revealed in court that investigators determined the explosion had been an accident.

Judge Mackintosh was told that Grey took the ute after crashing while driving northward on the wrong side of State Highway 2, near Upper Hutt, soon after 7pm on the Saturday of August 8 last year. He was at the time banned from driving after being stopped driving unlicensed in Napier a few weeks earlier.

A woman stopped to offer help at the crash, but Grey approached her ute, banged on the window, shouted at her to get out, opened the door, and grabbed her arm and tried to pull her out, before she unbuckled her belt, and got out.

He tried to get its female driver into the back seat but then drove off, over the winding Remutaka Hill road and into Featherston where police took up a chase in which Grey drove flat and ever-shredding front tyres for more than 20km after cross road spikes near Masterton.

With sparks flying as the vehicle started hitting the ground with its wheels down to the buckling rims, and other parts starting to fall from the ute, Grey finally stopped at Mikimiki, north of Masterton, barely an hour after taking the ute almost 90km away.

The police summary said Grey refused to supply a blood sample back at Masterton police station, where a doctor determined he had been incapable of having proper control of a motor vehicle.

Later he admitted he had been smoking methamphetamine, and told police: "I was scared. I thought you were going to kill me."

He admitted the facts, including possessing a "psychoactive substance" and a machete which police had found in his crashed vehicle on the Hutt motorway.

The judge accepted lawyer Ranger's submissions that Grey was remorseful and "presented" in court as a changed man who accepted the penalty he would have to face, and having to pay $8491 in reparation to the woman for damage to her ute.

The judge noted a restorative justice conference with the woman would have taken place had it not been for the long delays stemming from the subsequent and unrelated and Grey's hospitalisation, and that as a result the normal imprisonment for such offence was inappropriate.

Grey had pleaded guilty to charges of robbery, dangerous, reckless, careless and unlicensed driving, failing to stop for police, driving with a sustained loss of traction, and possession of an offensive weapon and a psychoactive substance.

Judge Mackintosh sentenced Grey to 18 months' intensive supervision and disqualified from driving or obtaining a licence for 18 months.