Woman convicted of vandalising her mother’s home with gang symbols

A Dunedin woman vandalised her mother’s home with gang symbols and offensive drawings hours before it was partly gutted by a mysterious fire.

Courtney Paige Findlater, 23, appeared in the Dunedin District Court before Judge Jim Large this week, facing 12 charges for offending over a two-year period.

In the early hours of May 31, 2021, Findlater broke into her mother’s home with a co-offender.

The house was undergoing extensive renovations and a large number of tools were stored there.

The pair used paint tins to tag various walls with “gang symbols, words and offensive drawings”, court documents said.

They tipped paint throughout the kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms, causing significant damage.

At about 4am, two fires at the home were witnessed by the public, with Fire and Emergency New Zealand deployed to save the structure.

The duo were initially charged with arson but the charges were withdrawn.

“There is no evidence to how that fire was lit or who by,” counsel Karlena Lawrence said.

The fire destroyed $6075 of tools and the landlord sought reparation to cover the damage.

Judge Large said the woman had a fast-growing rate of “quite deliberate offending” that was spread around the country.

Findlater also pleaded guilty to a string of fraudulent Facebook marketplace activities after she repeatedly posted items for sale, took the money and then blocked the victims.

“That really goes to the heart of people’s trust these days,” the judge said.

Lawrence said Findlater was “clearly a young and vulnerable person” whose crimes had been mainly financially driven.

“They didn’t have the supervision of a parental figure in their lives, which would have allowed them to make better judgement calls,” she said.

Findlater was sentenced to nine months’ home detention and ordered to pay $4360 reparation for her dishonesty offending and the house damage.

Her co-offender will be sentenced later this month.

“There really is a need for some deterrence and protection of the community,” the judge said.