KEY POINTS:
Two women involved in a hammer attack on an innocent householder avoided jail terms at their Christchurch District Court sentencing today.
Two men who carried out the attack, which left a man with post concussion syndrome including recurrent headaches, sleeplessness, and memory disturbance, were jailed last year.
They were the main offenders but three women who accompanied them on the late night home invasion have since pleaded guilty to charges of injuring with intent and assault.
Katharine Marie Fitzgerald, 21, mother of a three-month-old child, was today sentenced by Judge Philip Moran to six months home detention and 250 hours of community work. She must not take alcohol during the detention term.
Kylee Faye Fisher, 19, a cleaner, was given a year's intensive supervision which she was told would need "her full attention and dedication". She must also complete 250 hours of community work.
Fisher had also admitted unrelated charges of unlawfully taking cars, theft of a bicycle, theft of a woman's handbag from a bar, possession of a pipe for smoking drugs, giving false details to the police, and being found unlawfully in a yard.
A third woman involved, Melodie Josephine Biddle, 20, a bartender, was remanded on bail to April 15 for sentence because pre-sentence reports had not been completed.
Judge Moran said Fitzgerald had claimed to her friends that a man had "treated her shabbily" and they had gone to the house, with the two male co-offenders, for revenge.
At the house, they were greeted by a different man who knew nothing about the matter and did not know why he was punched, slapped, kicked and beaten with a hammer on the head and back.
The judge said Fitzgerald had set up the attack, and told the driver where to go. She had handed the hammer to one of the attackers but said she did not know how it was going to be used.
Fisher did not know about the hammer, but had actively encouraged the attackers and had assaulted the victim herself.
- NZPA
