KEY POINTS:
A young mum accused of drink-driving at twice the legal limit with six children in the car admits she made a "stupid" mistake, but says she had no other choice.
Speaking at her parents' Whangarei home, Trevina Baker told the Herald on Sunday she accepts drinking and driving is wrong.
With three prior drink-driving convictions, the most recent in 2005, she is preparing herself for the possibility of jail.
But she wants the public to know she was fleeing from a violent domestic incident.
Thursday evening a week ago, Baker had just returned from a 12-hour shift working on the Whangarei wharves. Her female cousin and the cousin's partner were at Baker's parents' house, and the cousin and her partner began fighting.
They yelled and screamed at each other for hours and eventually smashed a bedroom window while the six pre-school children tried to sleep in the next room.
"I tried to make them stop, I tried to calm them down. But I had to go, I had to get out with the kids because they woke up and started crying," Baker says.
At 1am, the 28-year-old bundled the kids into the car - four of her own and two nieces - to drive to her home a few blocks away, but was stopped by a police alcohol checkpoint en route.
Immediately she admitted drinking, about seven Steinlagers by her reckoning, and was taken to the police station to be breath-tested.
Baker told police why she had been drinking and driving, but the officers took the children back to the house where the couple had been fighting.
Later that day, she appeared in Whangarei District Court and was charged with drink-driving, driving while forbidden, and breach of bail for an earlier charge of wilful damage.
Police allege Baker blew 839 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath, more than twice the legal limit of 400mcg.
"Everyone thinks I'm this terrible person. I feel like I've been dragged through the mud," she says.
"Everyone is having a go at me, but I had my reasons, even though they're not good reasons."
Too embarrassed to even walk to the dairy since the news broke, Baker acknowledges leaving the incident is an explanation but not an excuse for drinking and driving.
Asked why the police weren't called to stop the couple fighting, Baker says she didn't want to report her cousin, who already had an active warrant for her arrest.
"It was stupid, I should have rung the police because it might have saved all this trouble. Either way, I'm probably going to lose my kids.
"I was ringing and ringing mum at work but I couldn't get through."
Her six children - the oldest two were not present that night - are now in the care of her parents, George and Lesley, until the court case is resolved.
Both were working the late shift at the wharves the night Baker was caught drink-driving and were unable to take her phone calls. They arrived home to a trashed house.
The couple were disappointed to hear their daughter had been drink-driving but were understanding once they heard why.
Lesley Baker says CYF had ordered the children be taken from any violent situation as Baker's ex-partner used to beat her in front of their four children and now has a restraining order against him.
"She did the right thing, to take the kids away, but it was the wrong way. I wish she had called the police. It was a spur of the moment thing," George Baker says.
"We can understand why the public are baying for blood. But we just want to get our story out there, so we can get our mana back, in a way," Lesley says.
"I accept that people shouldn't be drinking and driving," Baker says.
"I was stupid, what I did. But given the circumstances, if I lose my kids over this, that's really going to bother me."
