Man acquitted over machete threat

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A Westport man was acquitted in the Greymouth District Court yesterday of two charges of threatening grievous bodily harm and one of possessing a machete.

Ethan Harmon was charged with threatening two men with a machete, on September 3 last year, after hearing that one of them had allegedly sexually assaulted someone he knew.

The Crown alleged he visited the two men's flat and confronted them about the alleged assault. He faced a jury trial.

The court heard Harmon threatened to cut off one man's fingers, and "cut up" the other one.

However, the jury took less than an hour to find Harmon not guilty on all counts.

In summing up the case, defence lawyer Marcus Zintl said there had been "serious inconsistencies" in the evidence of the two complainants, especially concerning the machete. Both complainants had been neither "credible nor reliable".

Mr Zintl said one of them had only mentioned pushing the machete away, not grappling with it or handling it, and those were "very important details" for one of the complainants to leave out when he was talking to the police.

Mr Zintl said he was not suggesting that Harmon's actions should be condoned but they were not criminal in any way.

"At most, there was finger pointing and strong words, no threats were made."