A Wollongong judge has chastised a man who flicked a lit cigarette out of the window of a moving car when the state was under a total fire ban last year.
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Shane Desmond Grant was seen by police to throw the lit cigarette butt out of his friend's car just after midnight on October 21.
The court heard two days earlier, a total fire ban had been issued across the state, as fires raged between Bargo and Picton, and NSW faced some of its worst fire danger days in decades.
Grant initially denied committing the crime but was found guilty after a local court hearing, copping a $1400 penalty. He was fined a further $700 after pleading guilty to a charge of resisting police, stemming from the same incident.
He appeared in Wollongong District Court on Friday seeking a reduction in the higher fine, claiming it was too much, given the limited income he earned as a chef at the Collegians Club.
Presiding judge Paul Conlon agreed to halve the fine owing to Grant's financial circumstances, but not before he took aim at the 36-year-old's appalling behaviour, both in depositing the cigarette and abusing police when questioned and eventually arrested.
"You'd have to have been living under a rock not to know what was going on, so widespread was the media coverage," Judge Conlon said.
"Then you get a man like this who decides to throw a lit cigarette out the window of a car, then behaves like a priceless idiot when confronted by the police."