The Hamilton mother helped her sons avoid arrest after they carried out ram raids of Noel Leeming in Cambridge, pictured, and the Super Liquor outlet in Te Awamutu. Photo / Mike Scott
A mother shot at two police officers standing on the side of the road in an effort to help her ram-raiding teenage children avoid arrest as they fled around various Waikato streets.
She messaged her kids soon after saying, “I just shot the pigs”.
The 32-year-old woman, who cannot be named in order to protect her children’s identity, then went on to do it again, less than an hour later, firing a shot at a policeman as he spoke with a Bader resident on his front lawn.
On Thursday, the mother, who is jointly charged with a 28-year-old Hamilton man, pleaded guilty to three charges of using a firearm against law enforcement and another of being an accessory after the fact in relation to another aggravated robbery.
Two of the woman’s teenage sons, along with nine of their associates, stole vehicles and ram raided the Noel Leeming store in Cambridge on December 19 last year, before targeting the Super Liquor outlet in Te Awamutu a short time later.
The group fled and as they headed towards Hamilton were spotted by police.
The youths in one car ditched their vehicle, which then caught fire, on 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. It was 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 St Andrews, Hamilton.
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 they said “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.
At 3.49am, there were messages between her and her co-accused partner who told her where a firearm was.
She told him 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 the “thumbs up” emoji and asked for details of their location before being told they were on Ohaupo Rd.
Two constables parked their patrol car, with lights and sirens on, on the side of Gillard Rd just before 5am.
As they stood there, the woman and her partner drove past and when about 150m away, shots were fired at them.
No one was hit or injured.
After firing the rounds, she 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 had now stormed the small suburb, with cordons set up and a dog patrol in the area.
As the cordons were set up, police officers began speaking to residents.
At 5.45am, a constable was speaking to a resident outside a house when the accused pair drove past in their car and a shot was fired.
The officer and resident ducked for cover as the bullet ricocheted off a wall behind them.
The woman and her partner 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 on River Rd.
Armed with a firearm and hockey stick, they ran in and struck the shop worker around the head and body a number of times.
They fled in a stolen Subaru while one of the sons filmed a livestream 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 livestream, 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.
In the Hamilton District Court, Judge Brian Callaghan convicted the woman on all charges and remanded her in custody for sentencing in December.
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for eight years and been a journalist for 19.
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