Woman sentenced for involvement in car theft
A RELATIONSHIP breakdown led a Gold Coast woman on a downward spiral, which ended when she was involved in a car theft
Grafton
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A GOLD Coast woman who handed herself in to Maclean police over her involvement in a car theft in Albury last year was sentenced this week.
Rebecca Lee McDermott, 26, pleaded guilty to a charge of aggravated take/drive with a person in company in Grafton Local Court on Monday.
According to police facts tendered, at 4.40pm on August 13 last year the victims involved went to meet a female by the name of Beccy, who was a Facebook friend of one of the victims and later identified as McDermott.
Upon arrival at a BP service station in Albury, the victims parked their Holden Commodore in a parking bay. Soon after the victims arrived, another vehicle, a Mazda 3, parked nearby, which was driven by McDermott, and a man got out of the front passenger seat.
The man approached the driver's side of the victim's car and told the victims to get out. When one of the victims told the man to get out of their car, the man told the victim he would "f------ shoot" him. The victim told police the man had what appeared to be a firearm tucked into his pants.
McDermott got out of the vehicle and told the victims to get away from the car, before getting back in the Mazda 3. The other man reversed the Holden Commodore to exit the service station, striking one of the victims as they attempted to get back in the car.
The two vehicles were seen leaving the BP and when the victims contacted McDermott she told the victims to call off the police, saying "if (they) don't call off the police I'll burn it out".
McDermott's defence solicitor Mark Spagnolo said she had grown up in Albury and moved to Wagga Wagga at 18 and had a successful business as a hairdresser but things fell apart after discovering her partner had an affair and she lost her business.
Mr Spagnolo said his client had returned to Albury and fell in with childhood friends who had been a bad influence on her but had turned her life around after visiting her parents in the Clarence Valley and handing herself in to police.
Magistrate Karen Stafford agreed McDermott had a low risk of re-offending and showed genuine remorse, and sentenced McDermott to a two-year community corrections order.
Originally published as Woman sentenced for involvement in car theft
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