By JO-MARIE BROWN
A Taupo teenager has admitted painting racially motivated death threats on an immigrant's shop window and detonating two pipe bombs outside the premises.
The 18-year-old, who has interim name suppression, yesterday pleaded guilty in the Taupo District Court to one charge of arson and one of wilful damage
after he and two friends targeted the town's Double Happy Chinese Takeaway store in January.
At the time, Taupo police considered laying a seldom-used charge of inciting racial disharmony against the teenagers but decided not to after taking legal advice that it could not be sustained in court.
The youngest member of the group, aged 16, was sentenced in the Youth Court in February to three months in a residential centre followed by six months' supervision.
A 19-year-old Taupo labourer has pleaded not guilty to one charge of arson and will reappear in court next month.
Statements from police that were presented in court yesterday said the 18-year-old had previously admitted making three explosive devices using copper piping.
When asked why the group decided to then tape two of them to the Chinese takeaway store's front window, the teenager said it was his 16-year-old friend's idea.
"If it was me I would have stuck them in a letterbox or something," he said.
The explosion blew a 20cm hole in the window, scattering shards of glass both inside and out, and puncturing a small hole in the ceiling.
The 18-year-old also admitted he and the 16-year-old had painted swastika symbols and the words "kill gooks" and "go home zipper" on the shop's frontage the previous evening.
"Don't know [why]. I just done it," the teenager later told police.
No other explanations for their actions have been given but at a family group conference held before the 16-year-old was sentenced the teenager admitted he had been foolish.
