Gabrielle Rowe: Southbank woman bashes friend over text message

A vicious young woman has been called a “mongrel” in court, despite looking “angelic”, and warned she might end up as a killer.

Rowe sat silently as Magistrate Hardy slammed her. (Generic photo)

A violent young woman has been slammed in court, with a magistrate calling out the nasty “mongrel” behind the 22-year-old’s “benign and angelic” appearance.

Gabrielle Rowe fronted the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Friday, pleading guilty to charges including making threats to kill, intentionally causing injury and unlawful assault.

The court heard Rowe, who appeared by videolink from prison, had committed more violence towards a friend after she spent time in custody earlier in the year for attacking the same woman.

Rowe and her friend were eating dinner on the couch in her Southbank apartment on May 27 when Rowe became enraged after her friend received a text message.

Rowe grabbed the woman’s phone, then grabbed the woman’s hair and repeatedly punched her in the face and body, causing swelling.

The court heard the bashing continued on and off for about 20 minutes before the victim suggested they go and buy cigarettes, and managed to run away from Rowe when they got to the street.

The victim then went to a police station, and while she was reporting the incident, received numerous “vile” threats from Rowe via text, with Rowe claiming she was going to slit the victim and her friend’s throats.

When Rowe was arrested shortly afterwards, she told police, she had just “got hot-headed” and was just “angry and upset”.

Rowe also pleaded guilty to spitting in the face of an employee and stealing wizz fizz lollies when she and a group of rowdy friends were being kicked out of Eureka Aquatic Centre in January 2019.

Her 2021 crimes breached a two-year community corrections order she was handed on top of a 21-month jail sentence in December at Ballarat Magistrates’ Court for crimes including slashing a JB Hi-Fi store manager with a box cutter when she was trying to steal from the shop.

The court heard Rowe, who grew up in Ballarat, had moved to Melbourne this year to get away from her negative peers.

It was heard she had come from a “good family” but had abandoned them and got heavily into drugs.

Magistrate Hardy said he could not understand Rowe’s decisions or why she had such a violent streak.

“Your behaviour is completely and utterly reprehensible,” Mr Hardy said.

“You look benign and angelic sitting there on the screen with your long red hair but there’s another part of you that becomes a really nasty, really violent mongrel.”

“And somebody’s got to say those sorts of things to you

“I don’t know why you think you can attack people

“At some stage, if you don’t finish this and move to another way of living, you might end up really badly hurting somebody — or worse — killing somebody.”

Mr Hardy said he thought Rowe had deserved to be jailed for longer than 21 months for her previous crimes.

He ordered her to be reassessed for a community corrections order.

Rowe will return to court on August 20.