Otorohanga man Jacob John Holmes was so infuriated his ex-partner got a new boyfriend he burned down her house, not pictured, and her new partner's vehicle. Photo / 123rf
Otorohanga man Jacob John Holmes was so infuriated his ex-partner got a new boyfriend he burned down her house, not pictured, and her new partner's vehicle. Photo / 123rf
Fuelled by booze and driven by jealousy, a man burnt down his former partner’s home, then drove to where she lived with her new boyfriend and set his car on fire.
But before igniting the vehicle’s air intake snorkel, and under cover of darkness, Jacob John Holmes first disconnected the garden hose from the outside tap and removed the connection, rendering the hose unusable.
The now 23-year-old then stood in the carport and waited before the new boyfriend ran outside, alerted by his dogs barking. But upon spotting Holmes he ran inside and locked the doors behind him.
That didn’t stop the Ōtorohanga man though - he simply smashed his way through the ranch slider glass panel and started trying to attack the pair.
A sober and remorseful Holmes stood in the dock of the Hamilton District Court this week when Judge Noel Cocurullo sentenced him on two charges of arson and burglary, intentional damage, common assault, and male assaults female.
Despite the property destruction and violent behaviour, his lawyer Amin Osama doggedly argued for 70% worth of discounts for his client, stating he was not only young and afflicted by ADHD, but he’d never appeared in court before and was otherwise of good character with good prospects of rehabilitation.
‘Should I kill him now?’
Holmes’ violence began in July 2023, not long after he had moved out and the relationship had ended.
The victim woke to find him in her bedroom and looking through her cellphone.
She tried to get it back off him but he picked her up and threw her on the floor. She ran outside, and Holmes followed her, before she ran back in and locked the doors, thinking she was safe, but Holmes could still get inside.
He began abusing her, calling her a “slut” and a “whore” accusing her of cheating, and threatening to kill anyone she was seeing, as she made several attempts to get outside again.
Four months later, she began seeing somebody else and Holmes texted her saying he had seen them in town together and told her to go “jump off a bridge”.
On November 30, she moved some of her property out of that house and into her new partner’s farmhouse.
That same night, Holmes turned up, forced his way inside, and lit four different fires causing extensive and irreparable damage before leaving and heading to the new partner’s house at 1.20am.
It was then he lit the vehicle on fire, smashed his way inside the house, and began fighting with the new boyfriend who was trying to restrain him as his former partner called 111 and their employer.
Holmes said, “should I kill him now, I am ready to kill him”. After making the calls she returned to see her new partner struggling with Holmes and tried to help but was punched by Holmes twice in the left eye with a closed fist.
Help soon arrived, along with police and he was arrested.
‘Are you saying he can get munted and burn a house down?’
Crown solicitor Kasey Dillon said intoxication was the driving factor of the offending and said nothing should be directly attributable to Holmes’ ADHD diagnosis.
As for good character discount, Holmes was too young and “simply hasn’t been alive long enough to accumulate such a good contribution to society”.
He labelled a defence request for 70% discounts as “wholly out of proportion to the gravity of the offending”.
But Osama pointed to the pre-sentence report which recommended home detention.
“What is optimistic is you getting 70% in discounts,” Judge Cocurullo dryly replied.
Osama valiantly, but not completely successfully, then began arguing for around six different discounts for youth, ADHD, Section 27, previous good character, remorse, and rehabilitation.
He said Holmes’ youth and ADHD both shared the hallmarks of impulsivity, but the judge wasn’t buying it.
Hamilton District Court Judge Noel Cocurullo was unimpressed Jacob Holmes was trying to get his sentence slashed by 70%. Photo / Dani Zollickhofer
“It would not have occurred if he was not intoxicated to the extent that he was,” the judge said.
“He didn’t offend because he was young. He was jealous because she had run off with another man and he was drunk.
“He wasn’t entitled to burn someone’s house down.
“Mr Osama, 70%? Are you really saying that you can get munted, go and burn someone’s house down, and you get a 70% reduction? I mean, really?”
But Osama continued, saying his client had a multitude of discounts available to him, including a 20% discount for his young age, at the time of the first offence he was 21, and added that Holmes had no previous convictions and supplied three character references from people who knew him, stating they were just as shocked as anyone to hear what he’d done.
He also had a traumatic upbringing and witnessed a raft of family violence and said in some ways, it wasn’t a surprise to see him in the dock on family violence charges.
However, he then began pointing at the victim’s reparation schedule, which totalled $12,200, and noted many items didn’t have any accompanying receipts.
But it was that comment that seemed to create a frost in the air.
“I’ve got a feeling that [Holmes] expects me to convict and discharge him and send him home?” the judge said.
“That there’s, across the board, a lack of complete responsibility about the serious damage that he’s done and the serious home invasion that he committed ... that you can go out, torch a house, torch a car, drunk, do a home invasion, do some violence and just go home.”
‘Either way, you’re going to jail’
Judge Cocurullo told Holmes that his bid for a 70% sentence was “unrealistic and inappropriate”.
“It would be tantamount to saying to the community that while intoxicated after learning your former partner had found someone else, as they were entitled to do, they can destroy a home, a car, and attack people and not expect a jail sentence.
“It is inappropriate and you are not getting that.”
Judge Cocurullo ultimately agreed to issue a total of 50% in discounts arriving at an end jail term of two years and seven months.
“I can tell you Mr Holmes that notwithstanding you are a first offender to the court ... even if you had got below 24 months I would still not have given you home detention and still sent you to jail.”
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for nine years and has been a journalist for 20.
