Silvia Schreuder fined $700 for stealing credit cards off dying woman, Kay Shaylor
AN ICE addict grandmother was fined $700 for stealing credit cards off aged care nurse Kay Shaylor as she lay dying in her car after a crash.
A FORTY-five-year-old ice addict grandmother “felt sick” about stealing a dying woman’s credit cards but did it anyway so she and her co-accused could buy groceries to swap them for more drugs, a court has heard.
Silvia Schreuder was given a three-year good behaviour bond and fined $700 in Gosford Local Court today for stealing 62-year-old aged care nurse Kay Shaylor’s credit cards and using them moments after she was fatally injured in a head-on crash at North Gosford about 6am on September 3, 2016.
Mother-of-one, and learner driver, Bianca Harrington, 20, was charged with dangerous driving and negligent driving occasioning death, over the crash.
She had her Learner’s licence suspended but has not entered a plea and was granted bail in October.
Magistrate Peter Barnett acknowledged the community outrage at the despicable act but had to remind himself he was not a “moral court” but “a court of law”.
“The taking of the card and the using of the card, but particularly the taking of the card, is considered in the colloquial vernacular as a ‘low act’,” he said.
He said his hands were essentially tied because Schreuder had only been charged with stealing the cards and using them to buy groceries and a $20 prepaid credit for a Telstra mobile phone, registered in her name, which “led police in her direction”.
“Many people, I have no doubt, at first blush would expect someone stealing from someone dying on the side of the road should go to jail,” he said.
Schreuder had pleaded guilty previously to stealing the cards and one count of obtaining financial advantage by deception but changed her not guilty plea to a second count of using the cards in exchange for a further 10 per cent discount on her sentence.
She also had three other fraud offences withdrawn in exchange for giving evidence against her co-accused Jason Richard Allen Hall.
In the witness stand Schreuder said the pair had been staying at a mutual friend’s house on Manns St when they heard a loud crash outside.
She said they rushed out to find the mangled wreck of Ms Shaylor’s Mitsubishi Mirage.
Schreuder told the court she initially asked another bystander to pass the woman’s handbag to her so she could find out her name and see if she could rouse her.
The seemingly unconscious Ms Shaylor “responded” when Schreuder called her name and “moved” but they were told to step back onto the footpath when paramedics arrived.
It was at this point she said Hall “stood on my foot” and gestured with his eyes to indicate she not return the handbag.
She said she told him she felt sick and the pair went inside the house and rummaged through the handbag in the second bedroom before three credit cards were left on the bed.
The court heard he pocketed about $25-30 in cash and she took the dying woman’s cigarettes.
She said she put everything back into the handbag and gave it to another woman to hand back to paramedics.
“I felt sick because of the accident and probably my wrong doing,” she said.
Asked why she did it she replied: “I was not in a good state of mind at the time, I was on ice at the time”.
The magistrate responded: “the woman on the side of the road was in a worse state of mind”.
She said they decided to go for a drink at the “early opener” at Gosford Hotel but it was shut so they headed over to Woolworths “to do some shopping and we can swap it for ice” but not before admitting to scoring and smoking a “hit” on the way.
Earlier today, at her sentencing, the magistrate said her ice addiction “might explain why her moral compass was so awry” but plenty of other bystanders had equal opportunity to steal the cards and that she was the only one morally bankrupt enough to do it.
He said given her limited finances it would probably take Schreuder as long to pay the fine as it would to serve her three-year bond.
“Every time you have to put your hand in your pocket you can think of that poor lady,” he said.
“The victim was vulnerable as anyone can be. There is no way she could have resisted the taking of those cards.”
Her 43-year-old accomplice had previously pleaded guilty to using the victim’s St George and Commonwealth credit cards to go on a three-day shopping spree in which he racked up $481.79 on one card and $191.49 on another on everything from tobacco, cigarettes, bottles of spirits
and even a fishing rod from BCF.
He pleaded not guilty to stealing the cards but the magistrate found none of Schreuder’s evidence in the stand had been questioned in cross examination by Hall’s Aboriginal Legal Services solicitor and found him guilty.
He will be sentenced at a later date.
Originally published as Silvia Schreuder fined $700 for stealing credit cards off dying woman, Kay Shaylor
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