A jury in the High Court at Wellington has found James Rupert Perica not guilty of a $478,000 security van robbery.
After 11 hours of deliberations the jury of seven women and five men also decided that Perica was not the man who tried to murder Warwick John Buxton by firing
two shots at him as he followed the getaway car.
None of the money taken from the security van in Upper Hutt on November 16 has been recovered.
Perica's relatives, friends and supporters in the public gallery gave cries of delight yesterday as the jury foreman read out the verdict.
Justice John Doogue immediately discharged the 38-year-old Perica, who has spent the past eight months in jail awaiting trial.
Police had successfully opposed his release on bail in hearings that included an application to the Court of Appeal.
Among friends and relatives there to greet Perica was his employer, Duncan McFarlane, who had testified that Perica had been picking him up from the Parkroyal Hotel in Wellington at the time of the robbery.
After Perica's discharge, prosecutor Philip Morgan asked Justice Doogue to make permanent a temporary order suppressing the name of a witness who identified Perica as one of two men who swapped getaway vehicles at the rear of an Upper Hutt gym after the robbery.
But the judge said that in the light of the verdict he would renew the suppression only temporarily until an application for final suppression could be fully argued. He directed that an application for final suppression be filed within 14 days.
- NZPA
