Miranda Maxwell faces glassing charge over Mannering Park Big 4 Caravan Park assault
A woman who glassed the owner of the Mannering Park Big 4 Caravan Park in 2015 has faced Gosford District Court nearly five years after the incident.
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The woman who glassed the owner of the Mannering Park Big 4 Caravan Park in 2015 has finally faced up to the charge.
Miranda Maxwell, from Myocum in northern NSW, faced one charge of reckless wounding in Gosford District Court on Tuesday.
It has taken nearly five years to get to this point, following the incident at the Monterey Ave caravan park on October 5, 2015 when Maxwell glassed Rozanne Paull, who owned the park with her husband Jeff.
Leading Central Coast criminal lawyer Samar Singh-Panwar, who was representing Maxwell, said just five weeks after the incident in Mannering Park, Maxwell was arrested for a similar incident in Western Australia and served a jail sentence.
When she was released she moved to Queensland to serve out her parole period.
Mr Singh-Panwar told the court Maxwell, a recovered alcohol and drug abuser, had been trying to face her NSW charge in order to receive her punishment and get on with her life. She was eventually extradited to NSW in June 2019 at the end of her parole period.
Facts tendered to court state that Mrs Paull had been staying at the caravan park with her mum Cherie Fletcher and had a few beers outside her caravan on the night of October 15, 2015. At around 10.30pm they decided to have a cigarette before heading to bed when they heard a voice say “are you talking to me?”
Mrs Paull had a conversation with Maxwell, who was holding a bottle of wine and a glass. Maxwell told her that she was having a bad day after having a fight with her mum.
The conversation oddly turned to the wild ducks that walked by and Maxwell said “I love ducks. Who would want to f**king holiday at Manno anyway”. Mrs Paull responded, “well you’re here too”.
After a while, Maxwell approached Mrs Paull who told her to “get the f**k off my property” before Maxwell lunged forward and grabbed the collar of Mrs Paull’s shirt.
Mrs Paull’s mum Cherie said she saw Maxwell raise the wine glass and swing it towards Mrs Paull’s head. The glass shattered.
She grabbed her daughter and pulled her into the van and locked the door, as blood was gushing from her head.
Mrs Paull sustained a large scalp laceration over her left temple which extended to the back part of her ear.
Maxwell fled the scene and a swab was taken from the broken glass. It was not until April 2016 that a DNA link notification identified Maxwell who was in prison in WA.
Maxwell, a mother of two, pleaded guilty to the offence. She took to the witness stand in court and told Judge Tanya Bright that she hadn’t used drugs or alcohol since her arrest and had replaced her addiction with mountain climbing.
She said she reached a turning point in prison where she decided to turn her life around.
“I made a decision quiet early on in jail to make it mean something,” she said.
“If I was going to be away from my children, I was going to have to grow. I now try to find things in life to even out the scale of things I have done in the past. I am very ashamed of my past. I believe that I have grown so much and gained so much knowledge, tools and respect.”
Over the past two years, Maxwell has completed rehabilitation courses, joined the State Emergency Services, worked as a traffic controller and completed courses to further her career.
When asked about the offence Maxwell, who was in her early 20s at the time, said she didn’t remember much aside from the conversation about ducks. She said back then it was normal for her to have had around three to six bottles of wine in the one night. She said she remembered a push and a shove.
“I am disgusted in myself, I feel so sorry that our paths crossed that night,” she told the court.
“I feel sorry for Rozanne and the physical scars that she has to carry, and the emotional scars. I feel sick in myself that I could be that person. If someone did this to my sister, mother … I would expect them to be punished. It deserves punishment.”
Mr Singh-Panwar pushed for an intensive corrections order considering Maxwell had put her life back on track and rehabilitated after her jail sentence.
“She has done everything one would expect from a person that’s been incarcerated to turn her life around,” he said.
Judge Bright will hand down her sentence on Friday July 10.