A 23-year-old man has been jailed for 28 months for shooting and killing a woman’s precious horse in revenge for a relationship break-up.
Christchurch District Court Judge Jane Farish said the shooting by Ryan Thomas Finlinson was an implied threat that if he could shoot the horse, he could do the same to the woman involved.
The judge quoted from the woman’s statement to the Probation Service. “She says it was the closest thing to shooting her. She indicated she lost her most prized possession – the thing she loved most in the world.”
The judge said the shooting was akin to other acts of vengeance, which sometimes involved burning down houses at the time of relationship break-ups.
She ordered Finlinson – who has only a drink-driving and a careless driving on his record – to pay $10,000 to the woman immediately for the loss of the horse, and for the SKS7.62mm rifle he used to be destroyed by the police.
Finlinson works on two dairy farms, and is a recreational hunter.
Judge Farish said his offending was in “an unprecedented category”.
Defence counsel Kiran Paima urged that home detention sentence should be imposed. Finlinson had “reacted to a set of circumstances he was unable to process”. The shooting of the horse had not been sadistic, or an act of prolonged cruelty. He was remorseful straight afterwards, now had insight into his offending, and had offered payment.
But Judge Farish said the aggravating factors were that the horse he destroyed was the woman’s beloved pet, and that a firearm had been used in the context of domestic violence.
She said Finlinson had admitted charges of assault and destroying the horse, knowing that it would cause loss to the woman.
The incident happened after the three-year relationship ended. Finlinson had moved out but was unhappy with the break-up. The woman said he made threats to shoot the horse, or shoot himself.
He went to the woman’s house on May 1 and found the woman there, with another man. He pushed the man into a wall, but did not injure him.
He then went to a paddock nearby and shot the woman’s horse twice through the head as an act of vengeance.
The shooting caused the woman extreme distress and left her devastated when she found the horse dead in its paddock. “You wanted her to feel like you did,” Judge Farish told Finlinson.
The pre-sentence reports indicated he had little insight into his offending, and was assessed as a high risk of causing serious harm unless there was some intervention.
He was apologetic for he harm to the horse, but the judge said: “I think you have a long way to go to understand the effects of your offending on the woman, and understanding of the harm you have caused to her.”
The sentence was too long for home detention to be considered but Judge Farish said she would not have granted it even if the sentence had been shorter, because of the level of violence.
She also ordered him to pay $201 for the removal of the dead horse.
Finlinson returned to court soon after the sentencing for Mr Paima to ask for bail pending an appeal against his sentence, which cannot be heard over the holidays. Judge Farish declined.
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