Killer seeks to retain rifle for his children

A Banks Peninsula man serving a life sentence for murdering his brother has asked that his rifle stay in the family and eventually be passed on to his children.

The rifle is said to be a valuable carbine that was not involved in the June 2008 incident in which Kelly Paul Daken was stabbed to death at the family home in Port Levy.

Patrick Allan Daken, a 42-year-old bushman, was found guilty by a High Court jury at a trial in August last year.

The trial heard Kelly Daken attacked his brother with a poker and threatened to kill him. Patrick Daken then stabbed him 12 times, causing wounds that penetrated his lungs and his brain.

The jury found that it had been an overreaction to the attack, and Justice Panckhurst jailed Daken for life, with a minimum non-parole term of 10 years, at the sentencing in October.

The judge said he was driven to the view that Daken had stabbed his brother in anger.

Daken was in court again yesterday over an outstanding charge of unlawful possession of the firearm.

Although he owned it, it was in the possession of his brother at the time of the murder and was found by police in a storage shed owned by Kelly Daken.

Crown prosecutor Marcus Zintl decided not to proceed with the charge because new information had come to light and it was no longer in the interests of justice to continue.

Even so, he wanted the court to authorise disposal of the rifle under the Arms Act.

Defence counsel Andrew McKenzie said it was a valuable weapon that was essentially held in trust.

Daken wanted it held by a grandfather who was a vetted licence-holder, to be passed on to Daken's children when they were old enough and had a valid licence themselves, McKenzie said.

Christchurch District Court Judge Gary MacAskill dismissed the charge and ordered that the rifle be handed over to a holder of the firearms licence nominated by Daken. But he reserved the right for police to reapply to the court if they had reservations about the licence-holder.

- NZPA