Highway Cops hell: Drink-driver Martin Van Turnhout threatened to attack camera operator

The drink driver took exception to being filmed for reality TV show Highway Cops.

It took a Waihola handyman 49 years to get his first conviction; his second was prompted just minutes after the first offence, driven by a desperation to avoid publicity.

Martin Gregory Van Turnhout, now 50, had been drinking at a party near his house on March 24.

Police saw him during his homeward journey and breathalysed him in his driveway.

It would have been a routine drink-driving arrest had it not been for a freelance cameraman filming for TVNZ series Highway Cops.

Van Turnhout and his wife reacted angrily to the man's presence on their private property.

''It's a stressful time for someone ... thinking your face is going to be all over television,'' counsel Andrew More said.

Van Turnhout's stress manifested in a series of foul-mouthed threats towards the camera operator during the trip to Milton police station in the patrol car.

''I'll f... punch your f... face out,'' he said.

''If my face turns up on telly, I'll hunt you down.''

The defendant issued several expletive-laden statements which resulted in the victim downing his equipment.

However, the aggressive behaviour had been captured by another, dash-
mounted, camera.

At the station, an evidential breath test gave a reading of 741mcg - nearly three times the breath-alcohol limit.

Van Turnhout was fined $750 and banned from driving for six months at a hearing in April.

He was back in the Dunedin District Court yesterday having admitted a charge of intimidation.

The court heard the abuse he doled out on the way to the station continued on the return leg as police drove him home.

More said his client was never going to follow through on his threats.

''The words used are drunken exclamations rather than anything with any real intent behind them,'' he said.

Van Turnhout was well respected in Waihola, the court heard, and did a lot of volunteer maintenance work at local schools.

More said the defendant had made a complaint to the production company behind the television show.

It had undertaken to review protocols, he told the court, without accepting any fault in the incident.

Judge Michael Crosbie fined the man $250 - ''a reasonably expensive night out for him'', his counsel said.

Van Turnhout's bid to avoid the public eye was partially successful. The judge declined an Otago Daily Times application to photograph him, saying it was ''inappropriate''.