City Councillor Targeted By Car Thieves Again

Invercargill City Councillor Barry Stewart had his Nissan Safari stolen for the second time in four months on Sunday morning.

The councillor was now beginning to think it was a personal attack, after a series of threatening incidents recently, prompting he and his wife to seriously contemplate moving.

“We didn’t get any sleep last night. I’m just worn out,” he said.

Both times his truck has been stolen from his garage – in November it was found crashed and abandoned on the Winton Bridge.

Within hours of it missing from his home, the windows had been blackened, licence plates ripped off and replaced, but when police found the truck it was identified as a Toyota Hilux.

Barry has just spent thousands fixing up his truck to make it roadworthy again, and he didn’t realise until Sunday afternoon that it was missing.

His neighbour heard the Nissan start up at 3:20am and thought it was strange that Barry was going out at that hour.

The offenders broke into the truck by smashing a window, but he didn’t hear anything because the garage is at the other end of the house.

Cr Stewart was made a new councillor at the last election and said since then he’s received plenty of unwanted attention, prompting him to think the burglary was the same people with a vendetta against him.

He’s also had cars skidding their wheels outside his house, bright lights shone into his home late at night, along with threats of having his house burned down.