Crown prosecutor Paige Noorland also took issue with the woman’s excuse that she was “essentially trying to over-parent”, having not been there for her kids due to the years she had spent behind bars as they were growing up.
Judge Cocurullo also did not accept the woman’s explanation.
“I can’t see how shooting at police officers is you trying to compensate for your parenting,” he told the woman.
“This nonsense about making up ‘because I was an absent parent and then went out and shot at police officers to assist my boys in doing their criminal offending’. It’s just not washing with this court.
“This is arming herself with a weapon, this is, on a number of occasions in a pre-meditated and planned way, going out to shoot at police and/or a member of the public with a campaign to assist her children with serious criminal offending.”
The charges relate to her two teenage sons who, along with nine of their associates, stole vehicles and ram-raided the Noel Leeming store in Cambridge on December 19, before targeting the Super Liquor outlet in Te Awamutu a short time later.
As the group fled towards Hamilton on December 19, they were spotted by police.
The youths in one car ditched their vehicle, which then caught fire, in Rukuhia Rd and they ran into a nearby elderly couple’s house.
Inside, an elderly man was assaulted and threatened before they stole his vehicle and fled. They were again spotted by police and pursued into Hamilton.
A couple of hours before these incidents, the woman became aware of an unrelated ram raid that occurred at Super Liquor in Hamilton’s St Andrews.
She contacted one of her sons on Facebook Messenger and said she was listening to the police scanner and asked if they were responsible for it — to which he answered “no”.
It was then that the woman began actively monitoring her children and using the scanner to find out where the police were to help the teens evade pursuit.
She told them she was “keeping her ears to the street” and being alert — “just in case” — while listening out for any response to the Cambridge ram raid.
A 3.49am the woman messaged her partner saying she was going to divert police by doing a shooting so her sons could avoid arrest.
At 4.15am, she sent a message to an associate saying she was listening out for her children on the scanner. Minutes later one of her sons told her the details of the stolen vehicle they were in as they travelled between Cambridge and Te Awamutu.
She got another message from her son at 4.42am about her letting off a shot. She replied with a thumbs-up emoji and asked for details of their location before being told they were in Ōhaupo Rd.
‘I just shot the pigs’
Two constables parked their patrol car, with lights and sirens on, in Gillard Rd just before 5am.
As they stood there, the woman was in a car that drove past and about 150m away she fired shots at the constables.
No one was hit or injured. After firing the rounds, the woman messaged her son to say, “I just shot the pigs.”
Police were meanwhile pursuing her other son and five associates into the southern city suburb of Bader.
One group of boys fled their car on foot. Police set up cordons and a dog patrol in the area and began speaking to residents.
At 5.45am, a constable was speaking to a resident outside a house when the woman drove past and a shot was fired.
The officer and resident ducked for cover as the bullet ricocheted off a wall behind them.
The woman then drove home and continued messaging several associates.
However, on January 4 this year about 5.10pm, the woman’s sons and two associates drove a stolen vehicle to a dairy in River Rd in Hamilton.
Armed with a firearm and hockey stick, they ran in and struck the shop worker around the head and body several times.
They fled in a stolen Subaru while one of the sons filmed a live-stream on social media.
The woman was waiting at the house for them to return so she could conceal their vehicle in her driveway.
In her son’s live-stream, the woman can be heard asking him how they went and what they got.
The teen is heard asking his mother to change the plates of the stolen vehicle.
The woman’s lawyer, Charles Bean, told Judge Cocurullo if it weren’t for her methamphetamine addiction the offending would never have happened.
Judge Cocurullo said he had to denounce her offending because people cannot think they could “just go out and shoot at police”.
While Bean pushed for discounts totalling 55 per cent, Judge Cocurullo settled for 40 per cent, including 20 for her guilty pleas, and sentenced her to four years and 10 months’ jail.
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for eight years and been a journalist for 19.
