Dean Cottle denied the charge of obstruction and was to have had a defended hearing in the Dunedin District Court today. Photo / File
Dean Cottle denied the charge of obstruction and was to have had a defended hearing in the Dunedin District Court today. Photo / File
A Mosgiel man who flew to Australia to evade giving evidence at the David Bain retrial has escaped prosecution for obstructing a fire officer a year ago because police took too long to lay the correctly worded charge.
Dean Cottle, a 49-year-old car salesman, was last August charged with knowinglyobstructing a member of the Fire Service ''in the attempted performance of a duty''.
The officer wanted to put out a car on fire on the property and the alleged offence arose from an argument over whether the officer needed to enter the house.
In 2009, Cottle was a prospective witness in Bain's retrial. He was an acquaintence of Bain's 18-year-old sister Laniet.
Bain was found guilty in 1995 of murdering his parents, brother and two sisters in Dunedin in 1994. He was acquitted after a retrial in 2009.
A warrant for arrest was issued for Cottle prior to the 2009 retrial, but he flew to Brisbane a few days later.
Today, Cottle denied the charge of obstruction and was to have had a defended hearing in the Dunedin District Court.
But when the case was called, counsel Len Andersen said the police now wanted to replace the original charge with one under a different section of the Fire Service Act.
