According to the summary of facts the assault occurred in November when Morunga was standing outside the Hutt Valley District Court. When the journalist, whose name is suppressed, began questioning Morunga she was spat on, her hair was pulled back and she was punched in the head multiple times. In the fracas the journalist dropped two cellphones containing three bank cards.
Morunga picked these up and visited a Lower Hutt liquor store where she used the cards to buy bottles of spirits and RTDs.
Morunga was also sentenced on a raft of shoplifting charges, including six occasions last year when she stole $2300 of groceries from supermarkets mostly by stuffing the items into shopping bags and leaving the store without paying. On one occasion she rammed a trolley loaded with $770 of groceries into a glass door, forcing it off its rails.
She also took $1295 of sleepwear from Peter Alexander, $550 of men’s active wear from Farmers and health and beauty products from the Warehouse. When approached by a Warehouse security guard she told him “Don’t touch me or I’ll f***ing kill you.”
Judge Wills said the aggravating factors in the case included that the offending occurred while Morunga was on bail and, for part of the time, a sentence of intensive supervision.
She noted that Morunga had an extensive criminal history with 74 previous convictions, half for violent offending. There had also been nine assaults while in prison.
Morunga’s lawyer Rufus Hancock referred to the mitigating features in the case which included his client’s guilty pleas, her young age - being only 24 and 25 years old at the time of the offending - and a diagnosis of foetal alcohol syndrome.
But the judge said Morunga had shown no remorse or given reasons for her offending and the prospect of Morunga complying with a community-based sentence was low.
She also told Morunga that until she addressed the causes of her offending, she would be stuck in her current cycle.
“Your offending has impacted many people, in all but one case, while going about their workday,” the judge said, adding that jail was the appropriate sentence.
Morunga was jailed for 18 months, with the judge imposing a number of release conditions including not to consume alcohol and drugs, not to enter Lower Hutt central without the approval of a probation officer, to live at an approved address, to submit to electronic monitoring and to undertake a psychological assessment.
As Morunga was leaving the dock she called out “I love you, I’m going to jail” to someone in the public gallery. But it is understood because of the time Morunga has already spent in custody she is expected to be released almost immediately.
Morunga was living at a house in the Wellington suburb of Taitā with Baby’s Ru’s mother Storm Wall, when the toddler was taken in an unresponsive state to Hutt Hospital in October last year with severe head injuries. Ruthless-Empire Ahipene-Wall, died shortly after he was admitted to hospital, just shy of his second birthday.
No one has been arrested in relation to the death, but police have said Morunga is considered a person of interest in the case.
Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice.
