Jail for selling goods stolen from quake victims

File photo / NZH

A woman who sold hot water cylinders stolen from homes damaged and abandoned in last September's Christchurch earthquake has been jailed for a year.

The cylinders - 22 of them worth at least $1000 each - were stolen by Rachelle Karen Cook's partner who has already been sentenced to a significant jail term.

In Christchurch District Court today Cook, 27, admitted receiving the stolen property and selling the cylinders to scrap metal dealers for between $60 and $200 each.

She also admitted receiving a sleeping bag, backpack, and lawnmower worth more than $2000 from one of the burglaries.

Defence counsel Bryan Green said Cook accepted that a jail term had to be imposed, because of her breaches of community detention and supervision sentences imposed last year. "The biggest cost to her is the loss of her children," he said. Cook had not seen them since her arrest.

The court was told the children had been taken into Child, Youth, and Family care and were likely to be sent to live with her sister in Australia.

Cook was also sentenced today for breaches of the community-based sentences imposed in September for drink-driving.

Her previous record includes two years jail imposed in 2002 for being a party to a robbery. She was given leave to apply for home detention on that occasion and completed the sentence.

Judge David Holderness said today her latest offending was serious crime, which continued even when she became aware that the cylinders were being stolen from earthquake victims.

He imposed concurrent and cumulative jail terms totalling one year.

- NZPA