Wayne Cranfield, Vicki Newton: SA pair guilty of pushing woman from moving vehicle at Nakara

A South Australian man and his mother conducted a brazen daylight raid at Nakara on the mother of the man’s children, pushing her out of a moving vehicle as she tried to stop a child being taken.

Wayne Cranfield, 38. Picture: File

A South Australian man and his mother conducted a brazen daylight raid at Nakara upon the mother of the man’s children, pushing her out of a moving vehicle as she tried to stop a child being taken.

Victor Harbour pair Wayne Cranfield, 38, and his mother Vicki Newton, 57, were originally charged with kidnapping and recklessly endangering serious harm, but on Friday in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory, they were arraigned on only the latter charge.

The court heard the offending occurred at about 3pm on February 3, 2023, at Witherden St, Nakara.

Cranfield and Newton had earlier departed their native SA on January 30, 2023, on a mission to retrieve one of Cranfield’s two young children.

Both children, who lived full-time in SA, had travelled to Darwin to visit their 28-year-old, heavily pregnant mother for a “holiday,” but only one returned.

The other, a boy aged five, advised that he “wished to live with his mother,” the court heard.

Grandmother Vicki Newton, 57. Picture: File

“Acrimonious” communications between Cranfield and his ex-partner ensued, before Newton hatched the plot to drive north and retrieve the child.

Once at Nakara, the pair staked out the primary school, hoping that the child would see them and enter the car voluntarily, but they soon realised the child was not at school.

The court heard that the pair discovered the child and Cranfield’s ex-partner on Witherden St, at which point Cranfield exited the passenger seat, enveloped the child in a “bear hug,” and spirited them back to the vehicle.

The child’s mother, distressed, reached inside the vehicle as it began moving away, in an attempt to wrench her son from Cranfield, preventing him from shutting the door.

Cranfield pushed at the woman and eventually dislodged her, causing her to fall onto the asphalt, leaving her with bruising and abrasions to her back, arms and head.

Cranfield and Newton were arrested on Cox Peninsula Rd a few hours later as they attempted to return to SA.

He spent seven days remanded in pre-sentence custody, while Newton spent four days.

Cranfield defence counsel Beth Wild told the court that neither of the defendants “gave appropriate thought to what would happen next” once the child was snatched off the street.

“[They] planned to collect [the child], but never envisaged [the woman] would be injured in this way. There was no malice in it,” Ms Wild said.

She said her client, who has a mild intellectual disability, left school in Year 9 and has worked ever since as a commercial fisherman under his father.

Lyma Nguyen, defence counsel for Newton, said her client was a first-time offender who had previously lived an “unblemished” life, working since the age of 14.

Ms Nguyen submitted that Newton’s moral culpability was less than her son’s, as she did not physically push Cranfield’s ex-partner from the vehicle.

Both counsel asked for their clients to receive suspended sentences with no conditions attached, in order for them to return to SA where their employment and support network was.

Justice Graham Hiley will sentence the pair at a later date.