A 501 deportee who fell and dropped the food he was carrying went on to punch a good samaritan who tried to help him.

Weldon Christian Alec Perrett, 30, was at the Rototuna Shopping Centre on December 6 last year when he fell outside Anytime Fitness.

The victim saw what happened and asked if Perrett wanted any help. Perrett responded by getting angry and punching the man twice in the head.

Other members of the public intervened and police were called. They soon found Perrett on nearby Thomas Rd.

While heading back to the station, Perrett spat at one of the officers and tried to kick another, who was driving, multiple times in the back of the head.

Perrett was deported from Australia in March 2020, and was one of two deportees to appear before Judge Glen Marshall for sentencing in the Hamilton District Court today.

The judge noted Perrett didn’t have much support in New Zealand but said he’d since engaged with the Salvation Army and now seemed “motivated and engaged”, having enrolled in one of their programmes.

“I think you’ve been in the fog for a long time now, probably due to alcohol and substance abuse. You haven’t really been living in your life. You’ve just been reacting to situations.

 “It would be easy at this stage to impose an electronically monitored sentence ... or jail.

“[But] there is some sign ... that you want to make changes.

“This is probably the first and only opportunity for a long time that you are going to have to do that.

“If you don’t turn things, you are just going to keep sitting where you are now. You are still young enough to make some changes and have a good long life ahead of you.”

The judge ordered a $500 emotional reparation harm payment for the victim.

“You gave him a nasty fright and hurt him for no reason, so you should make it up to him,” Judge Marshall said.

Perrett was also sentenced to 12 months’ intensive supervision on charges of assault and assaulting police. The sentence would be judicially monitored, resulting in Judge Marshall receiving three-monthly reports on Perrett’s progress.

‘It was ‘dog’s’ car

Lester John Smit is also a deportee, having been sent back to New Zealand in 2020 from Australia where he’d clocked up “quite a history” of criminal offending.

Smit picked up his old ways in Hamilton in November last year, and was arrested on a string of offences.

One night, he and an associate went to a house on Thomas Rd where they each stole a pot plant.

On November 29, he broke into a house and stole a number of electronic items, and on the same night used a stolen vehicle to clamber over the fence of a Hamilton business and steal a trailer.

Smit was then caught selling a Toyota Corolla - worth $15,000 - to MetalCo Recyclers for $147.40, just hours after it had been used in a smash and grab at the Liquorland Eastside during the early hours of November 25.

When questioned by police about the stolen Toyota, Smit said he was given the car by his mate ‘dog’, who’d asked him to sell it as he didn’t have any identification.

 “I was told by ‘dog’ that the car was his but he recently recovered it after it had been stolen,” court documents quote Smit as telling police.

Judge Marshall said despite Smit’s exhaustive history in Australia, he hadn’t had anything relevant in New Zealand for some time.

Instead of sending him to jail, he sentenced him to seven months’ home detention.

He also ordered that during his sentence he not be in the possession of any drugs or alcohol, attend an alcohol and drug programme and not to contact his victims.