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A Papamoa man has been jailed for a year after admitting he broke into a house on his way home from a "drunken bender" because he needed to go to the toilet.
Climbing into the Papamoa Beach Rd property through a window, Mathew Stephen Cox, a 28-year-old plasterer,
could not find the toilet so he went into a bedroom and defecated on the carpet.
Cox was a man whose "horrible alcohol problem led to horrible offending," his lawyer Craig Tuck told Judge Peter Rollo in the Tauranga District Court today.
He was "utterly gutted" by his behaviour, embarrassed and "remorseful to the extreme," said Mr Tuck when Cox appeared for sentencing on a burglary charge.
"It is one of those situations which is lose, lose for everyone," the lawyer said.
His client had "kicked himself" and had written letters of apology to the householder and the judge.
The court heard how Cox had been walking home about 1am on March 24 when he felt the need to relieve himself.
After soiling the carpet, he took a stereo and three speakers from the bedroom, put them in a blanket and left the house. Having taken the goods over to a beach access walkway, he returned.
Upstairs, Cox found a DVD/home theatre player and numerous DVDs. He took a suitcase from a bedroom and put the items, along with some jewellery, into it.
Back downstairs, he broke a door to get into a bedroom which was locked from the inside. Realising at that point that one of the residents was home asleep, he grabbed the suitcase and ran off.
Judge Rollo ordered total reparation of $1480 to be paid at $25 a week after Cox's release from prison. The money was for commercial cleaning of the bedroom carpet, replacement of the broken door and frame and the cost of 18 music DVDs and a leather jacket which had not been recovered. The DVD player was damaged and had to be replaced.
Judge Rollo said Cox had numerous prior convictions, owed more than $10,000 in fines and had unfinished community work sentences.
Accepting that he was genuinely remorseful for his actions at the Papamoa house, the judge added an extra one month in prison to the 12 month sentence in return for remitting the fines and cancelling the outstanding community work.
Judge Rollo noted that Cox was willing to undertake residential treatment for his alcohol problems and hoped that would be part of his conditions of release from prison.
- NZPA