Pineapple lumps robber jailed over bail breach

A Rotorua teenager initially sentenced to home detention for her part in robbing a dairy of a packet of Pineapple Lumps will spend Christmas behind bars. Photo / Herald on Sunday

A Rotorua teenager initially sentenced to home detention for her part in robbing a dairy of a packet of Pineapple Lumps will spend Christmas behind bars.

Mere Ohlson, 17, cut off her home detention bracelet and has been sentenced to 12 months' jail.

Her sentences of home detention and community work were cancelled and replaced with the jail term when she appeared in the Rotorua District Court yesterday for breaching home detention and community work.

Ohlson was initially sentenced in September to six months' home detention and 200 hours' community work for her part in the robbery of Jeram's Superette in March.

Ohlson went to the store with 20-year-old Darcy Te Kiri and Boudene Gerry Walden, also known as Mahiawere, 21, pretending to have a gun and demanding cigarettes and cash from the owner's son.

The owner's son refused their request and pressed a panic alarm under the counter, alerting security and police to the robbery.

The store had been robbed at knifepoint just five weeks earlier.

As the trio ran from the shop, one of them stole a packet of Pineapple Lumps from the counter.

Ohlson appeared in court yesterday after an application was made for her sentence to be reviewed, given the breaches.

Judge Phillip Cooper said that on November 18 Ohlson had approval to go to a function. She cut off her home detention bracelet and went to Murupara, where she was arrested four days later.

Judge Cooper noted Ohlson had played a lesser role in the robbery, acting as a "distraction".

He said he had told Ohlson when he initially sentenced her in September that had the option of home detention not been available she would have been sentenced to 16 months' jail.

Ohlson had served two months of the home detention sentence and completed 38 hours' community work.

Judge Cooper said he had no option but to send Ohlson to jail as she not only lacked the motivation to carry out the sentences of home detention and community work but the integrity of the home detention needed to be considered.

Ohlson's lawyer Andy Schulze said things had become stressful where she was living and she decided to leave.