Heir to Territory painting dynasty jailed over family feud after drunken night out in Alice Springs

A court has heard the daughter of a renowned painter ‘from a long line of famous female artists’ drunkenly assaulted a family member with a weapon.

Freda Price, who is the daughter or renowned painter Anna Price Pitjara, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to negligently causing serious harm. Picture: Jason Walls

An Alice Springs woman “from a long line of famous female artists” has spent three months in jail after a drunken family feud that left her sister in hospital with serious injuries.

Utopia born artist, Freda Price, who is the daughter of renowned painter Anna Price Pitjara, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court last month to negligently causing serious harm to her sister.

The court heard the 37-year-old, her 41-year-old sister and 22-year-old daughter were all drinking at a bar in Alice Springs on June 25 last year and Price later went to sleep on a mattress on the floor at her daughter’s house, followed by her sister and brother in law.

Sentencing judge Sonia Brownhill said when Price’s daughter came home at about midnight, she woke the couple up and they started arguing.

Justice Brownhill said Price’s sister punched the young woman in the face and Price then picked up a torch and hit her sister on the head with it.

She said Price was “telling (her) daughter to just leave it” but “the verbal abuse on both sides continued outside”.

Price then picked up an iron bar and hit her sister with it, causing her to fall to the ground where her daughter struck her with another iron bar, breaking her leg.

Justice Brownhill said police were called and found Price’s sister “lying face down on the road, unresponsive”.

“Your daughter was sitting on the footpath, and you were standing, holding the iron bar,” she said.

Justice Brownhill said the injured woman was taken to hospital with a large cut to the top of her head and a broken leg, which required realignment surgery.

In sentencing Price to 13 months jail, suspended after three months’ time served, she said prosecutors had agreed she hit her sister with the torch “in defence of your daughter, but it was excessive”.

“You joined your daughter in assaulting the victim outside,” she said.

“Your conduct was negligent for failing to stop your daughter from hitting your sister with the iron bar on her leg when she was lying on the ground.”

Justice Brownhill said Price’s “violent response” to the fight between her daughter and sister was “out of proportion to the risk posed to your daughter from your sister”.

“At that point, your sister and her brother-in-law went outside, and things could have ended there without further violence, instead, you and your daughter followed them outside,” she said.

“While you told your daughter to leave it be, she did not listen, and you both then continued and escalated the violence against your sister.

“You did not then intervene to stop your daughter when she hit your sister with the iron bar on her leg.”

Justice Brownhill said while Price was jointly criminally responsible for her daughter’s conduct, “your moral culpability for the offending is less than that of your daughter, because she was the one that struck the blow that caused the injury”.

Justice Brownhill said on her release, Price planned to spend a few days painting in Alice Springs before returning to Boundary Bore for a funeral.