Dome Valley trial: Women guilty of attempting to murder teen

Michelle Blom, Nicola Jones, Julie-Ann Torrance, Cameron Hakeke, (court security), Wayne Blackett. Appearing in the Auckland High Court. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Two women have been found guilty of attempting to murder a teenager in the Dome Valley last May.

A jury took five and a half hours at the High Court at Auckland to convict Nicola Jones and Julie-Ann Torrance of egging co-accused Wayne Blackett on as he tried to snap the 19-year-old's neck.

Blackett had admitted to the attempted murder at the start of the trial after the woman was found left for dead by a roadside north of Auckland, having been hit repeatedly in the head with a hammer.

Torrance was also found guilty of sexually violating the young woman as they held her captive in an Auckland basement and beat her with a cricket wicket and bat.

Jones was found not guilty on that charge.

Torrance was found guilty of a further charge of cutting the woman's hair during the attack.

The jury also convicted Michelle Blom of taking part in kidnapping the young woman but found her not guilty of beating or sexually assaulting her.

The attacks took place in Blom's basement after she, Jones, Torrance and Jaclyn Keates, who pleaded guilty to her part in the assaults and was sentenced to jail last December, grabbed the young woman off Auckland's Karangahape Road.

In a separate attack in April 2016, Jones was also found guilty of tasering the young woman.

Torrance had earlier pleaded guilty to attacking the woman with a taser, while the pair both pleaded guilty to attacking and robbing the young woman during the same incident.

A fifth accused, Cameron Hakeke, was found guilty of kidnapping and assaulting the woman by cutting her hair during the April attack, but was found not guilty of robbing and tasering her.

Jones, Torrance, Blom and Hakeke have been remanded in custody until sentencing on April 28.

- AAP