Man hit plane with machete | Northern Territory News | Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia | ntnews.com.au
A MAN attacked a Territory plane with a machete in an effort to stop his promised wife leaving, a court has heard.
Darwin Magistrates Court heard that Karlson Bara, 24, was at home on Bickerton Island when he heard his wife was leaving on a charter plane with her family.
He picked up a four-pronged fishing spear and machete and sprinted to the airport. The Katherine Airlines charter plane was sitting on the runway with the pilot and four passengers inside.
The court heard Bara demanded the pilot not start the plane and let his wife off. Bara hit the windscreen with the machete.
The pilot got out and went some distance away until Bara left, but three times when he tried to get back in the plane Bara threatened him again.
Eventually community members convinced Bara to leave and the pilot took the plane and passengers away and reported the incident to police.
Bara's Aboriginal legal aid lawyer Stewart O'Connell said his client had not known his wife was leaving, and did not mean to cause damage but simply to stop her.
Magistrate Daynor Trigg said Bara had an extensive criminal history, and that damaging an aircraft was particularly serious.
He said the situation would have been "terrifying" for the passengers waiting on the airstrip in the plane.
Mr Trigg said air travel was the safest and sometimes only mode of travel for remote areas of the NT.
"If pilots are unwilling to fly places and airlines are unwilling to send aircraft in case of risk to their pilots or their planes then it makes these communities unliveable," he said. He sentenced Bara to 10 months' jail, with a non-parole period of eight months.