By Ric Stevens, Open Justice reporter of 
Police were on a routine night-time patrol in Auckland city when one of them was stabbed by Vaughan Subritzky. Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson
- Vaughan Elliot Subritzky was sent to jail for stabbing a police officer.
- He got a seven-year term but the Court of Appeal reduced his sentence after considering his guilty plea.
- Subritzky's longstanding antipathy towards police and past traumatic events were said to be factors in the attack.
- Without warning or provocation, the man stabbed an Auckland police officer in the head so hard that the knife broke.
Months later, Vaughan Elliot Subritzky, told a psychiatrist that he still was not sure that what he had done was wrong, such was his "antipathy" towards the police.
The stabbed police officer suffered two cuts - one of 3cm and one of 5mm - which required stitches.
Subritzsky eventually pleaded guilty to wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm for the attack on the male constable.
He was sent to prison for seven years but had that term reduced to six years and three months on appeal.
Gave police 'the finger'
The Court of Appeal, which reduced his jail time, said in a recent decision that on 5 November, 2022, Subritzky was on Queen Street in Auckland.
At 12.50am, he was carrying a knife when police officers on a routine patrol came past in their vehicle, and Subritzky gave them "the finger".
The police stopped and an officer got out and approached Subritzky, asking to speak to him.
Subrtitzky said he did not want to talk.
Then, while holding the knife and "without warning or provocation", Subritzky swung his right arm at the officer, the Court of Appeal decision said.
He stabbed the officer with such force that the blade of the knife came away from the handle.
Subritzky pleaded guilty to the wounding charge about 15 months later, and just three days before a trial on the matter was due to begin.
The sentencing judge considered that Subritzky pleaded guilty at the "very latest possible moment", so any discount on his jail term had to be very low, and was offset by the fact he was on bail for driving offences at the time.
However, the appeal court said Subritzky had changed counsel and the rationale for a sentencing discount - including reducing the burden of a trial on the courts and the victim - still applied when the guilty plea was entered.
The appeal court justices knocked nine months off his seven-year sentence as a result.
They also canvassed Subritzky's mental health problems, and the link between his offending and a "longstanding antipathy for the police".
This was said to have had its origins in his earlier dealings with police, around his use of highly modified cars.
"Such was his antipathy that he observed to [a psychiatrist] that he was not sure, even many months after the offending that what he had done was wrong," after what he perceived the police had done to him, the Court of Appeal decision said.
The psychiatrist's report said at the time of the attack, Subritzky may have been influenced by his post-traumatic stress disorder, and a hand being placed on his arm, reminding him of past traumatic events.
However, the psychiatrist also noted that "intoxication, impulsive self-destructiveness, and a long-standing resentment of police also likely contributed".
Four months before stabbing the police officer, Subritzky had been driving a car which crossed the centreline on the highway at Glorit, north of Helensville, and crashed head-on into another vehicle.
He was more than three times over the limit, and was subsequently charged with dangerous driving and driving with excess blood alcohol.
He was sentenced to three months in prison on each of those charges, to be served concurrently with his jail time for the wounding.
* This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald.
