Natasha Lee Parker flees court after she was sentenced to six months jail

A woman who allegedly did a runner after she was sentenced to jail by the Townsville Magistrates Court has been captured. LATEST.

A woman who allegedly did a runner after she was sentenced to jail by the Townsville Magistrates Court has been captured.

Queensland Police Service confirmed on Tuesday Natasha Lee Parker, 38, had been caught after absconding from Court 3 before she could be taken into custody.

She was found at a North Ward address about 11.30am on Tuesday morning.

Witnesses said the woman walked out of the building to Wills Street where she was picked up in a car with no registration plates.

A QPS spokeswoman confirmed that Parker had been charged with escaping from lawful custody and had reappeared in the same court on Tuesday.

The charge carries a maximum sentence of seven years in jail.

She has been remanded in custody.

Parker will appear in court on February 28.

Mum flees court in car with no plates after getting jail time

A woman escaped from the Townsville Magistrates Court immediately after being sentenced to six months’ jail, before police officers arrived to take her into custody.

Natasha Lee Parker, 38, walked out of Court 3 of the ground-floor Magistrates Court complex just before 12.30pm on Monday, telling everyone she was hot and needed to get some air.

Witnesses told the Townsville Bulletin she walked through the court reception area to one of two exits to Wills Street

“Then she got in a car … and there were no registration plates on the car, and … drove off,” a source said.

“We would have stopped her if we’d known there was a problem.”

Earlier the mother of three had pleaded guilty to the 19 charges and the court had heard one involved a range of petrol thefts between June and December last year.

After sentencing her to six months’ jail for 19 offences involving theft, drugs and traffic matters, Magistrate Richard Lehmann told Parker to sit in the rear of the court and wait for police officers to arrive.

She was immediately agitated, trying to tell him the offences were committed while she was under the strain of domestic violence, but he told her to be quiet and that the case was over.

He then left the room.

But she stood in the front of the courtroom, saying “Oh, my God”, then took off her jacket off saying she was hot and began fanning herself with the ends of her blouse.

Her lawyer Phil Rennick warned her not to leave the court, but she ignored him and walked out the door.

He then asked a man with her to go and bring her back and the man immediately left the court.

A few minutes later, two officers walked into the court, but by then Parker had left the area.

Earlier the mother of three, who was on bail, had pleaded guilty to the 19 charges and the court had heard they involved a range of petrol thefts between June and December last year.

The premium fuel thefts varied from $50 at a Seven Eleven store in Aitkenvale in November to $165.12 from a Coles station in Deeragun in June last year.

Following each of the seven petrol drive-offs, police had later charged Parker with drug and unlicensed driving in an unregistered, uninsured vehicle that had its registration cancelled in 2022.

It is believed she may have left the court as a passenger in the same vehicle.

Prosecutor Kimberley Rogers-Ford had earlier told the court that Parker’s drug driving in an unregistered, uninsured vehicle was a danger to the Townsville community.

She said fuel stealing was very prevalent in Townsville and people were tired of it.

She described Monday’s hearing as the ‘last resort for Miss Parker’.

Mr Rennick said Parker had been sexually abused by a relative at 8 years of age, diagnosed as bipolar at 14 and had her first child at 15.

He said she had also battled under domestic violence issues which was when she started taking drugs.

Magistrate Lehman said the ‘seriousness of her offending was the repetitive nature of it’.

He then sentenced Parker to six months jail with a parole date in April.

Normally, police officers are only present in the magistrates courts when there is a prisoner present, but they appear quickly when a person is sentenced to a jail sentence.

Court staff said the last escape from the Townsville Magistrates Court was in 2015 in similar circumstances, when a man fled from a court just after he was sentenced and the magistrate had left the room.

Originally published as Natasha Lee Parker flees court after she was sentenced to six months jail