Police are investigating last night's blaze at an Auckland Countdown supermarket store as arson. Video / @aleshalee1 / @blaze6412
A woman set a large fire in a Mt Wellington Woolworths to cause a distraction while shoplifting groceries.
Bystanders filmed the blaze, which forced the closure of the supermarket for a day due to fire, smoke and water damage.
She pleaded guilty to a reduced arson charge and received nine months' home detention.
An Auckland woman who started a large fire in the toilet-paper aisle of a Mt Wellington Woolworths supermarket says the blaze was intended to cause a distraction so she could shoplift a trolley full of groceries.
The brazen scheme, which was filmed by bystanders and posted on TikTok, at first worked – perhaps a little too well.
“You placed multiple people in the building at risk, including customers and Countdown staff,” Judge Ajit Swaran Singh told the 29-year-old this week as she was sentenced in the Auckland District Court for a reduced arson charge.
“Whilst the ... cost of damages is not available, it is clear from the photographs that the damage was extensive.”
The 29-year-old, who cannot be named at present for legal reasons, was arrested eight months after the incident.
She was initially charged with arson knowing danger to life was likely to ensue, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years' imprisonment. She entered a guilty plea after the charge was reduced to simple arson, carrying a maximum sentence of seven years.
A woman has been sentenced for arson after causing extensive damage to two aisles at a Mt Wellington Woolworths in a bid to steal a trolley full of groceries.
The July 2023 fire damaged two aisles of the grocery store, which was evacuated as firefighters fought the blaze. The store remained closed for a day due to fire, smoke and water damage, a Woolworths spokesperson told the Herald at the time.
According to court documents, the woman first showed up at the supermarket at 2.54 that afternoon and loaded a small trolley full of goods.
At 5.38pm, she entered a storeroom restricted to staff only.
“Whilst in the storeroom, [she] placed a gift bag in a trolley containing cardboard boxes and used a lighter to light the gift bag on fire,” the agreed summary of facts for the case states. “The gift bag, along with the cardboard boxes, caught alight but self-extinguished a short time later.”
She then went to the toilet-paper aisle and lit the fire there.
“While the fire was still burning, [she] went through the self-checkout area with her trolley full of goods without any attempt to pay,” court documents state.
The grocery items were never recovered.
“[She] stated that she was aware people were in the building at the time of lighting the fires,” documents state. “She explained that she stole the goods for her children as she was not receiving support at the time.”
Judge Swaran Singh asked her about that statement this week, noting that she should have been able to get some support from a JobSeeker benefit.
“I asked the father [for help],” she responded from the dock, where she sat between two guards. “He was not obliged to help me.”
Defence lawyer Callum Fredric noted that his client was careful not to set fire to explosive items such as fly spray, but the judge was unimpressed.
“If anything, toilet paper will catch fire far quicker than anything else,” the judge said. “She chose toilet paper to do that.
“There was a high level of pre-mediation and a high level of risk by this.”
Firefighters rush with hoses to the site of a July 2023 blaze inside Countdown Mt Wellington (since rebranded as Woolworths) in Auckland.
The judge settled on a starting point of 18 months’ imprisonment, a compromise between the 12 months sought by the defence and 20 months sought by the Crown. He then lifted the sentence by six months to reflect a range of other charges the woman admitted, including: stealing $600 worth of tools from a Glenfield Mitre10, driving 101km/h in a 50km/h zone in Hillsborough and two counts of unlawfully being in an enclosed yard at separate Papatoetoe addresses.
Court documents state she was caught on CCTV casing both residences, including going under the front deck of both homes and in one case prising open a door leading underneath the house. During the second incident, a neighbour noticed and asked what she was doing.
“In explanation, [she] stated that she was desperate to take a piss because she was pregnant and saw the house was empty,” police later reported.
The judge also added three months to the sentence for having offended while on bail before allowing a five month credit for the woman’s guilty pleas and six months in combined credits for her background and prior “toxic relationship”, mental health and medical issues and the month before sentencing that she had already spent in custody.
It would have resulted in an 18-month prison sentence for the arson charge, but the judge converted it to nine months' electronically monitored home detention followed by eight months of post-detention conditions. Concurrent sentences of two months’ home detention were ordered for each of the other charges.
Crown prosecutor Nastassia Pearce-Bernie had opposed community detention due to the woman’s history of poor compliance but accepted that the Crown would be amenable to an electronically monitored home detention sentence.
Probation also had recommended against a community-based sentence due to past violations of judge-imposed conditions.
Judge Sarwan Singh asked the woman directly if she had learned her lesson about following court directions during the month she had spent in jail.
“Definitely,” she said.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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