Luseane Angela Halaufia sentenced in Toowoomba Magistrates Court for stealing

The 25-year-old wanted to “distance herself from Toowoomba” and enter a rehab program on the coast, a court was told.

A 25-year-old woman who returned to drug use and offending just weeks after being released from jail has been returned to prison.

When Luseane Angela Halaufia appeared before Toowoomba Magistrates Court on June 6, her solicitor said the 25-year-old preferred to remain in custody rather than apply for bail as she wanted to get away from drugs so she could attend a rehabilitation program.

Noting she had already spent 40 days in custody, magistrate Kyna Morice on that occasion sentenced her to actual jail time but ordered she be released on parole as of June 15.

Unfortunately, just weeks after her release on June 15, Halaufia had fallen back in with “friends” with whom she used drugs and committed two stealing offences, the first a trolley full of groceries and the second the theft of a fridge from a vehicle she and others had entered, the same court was told on Tuesday.

Toowoomba Courthouse

Halaufia appeared via video from the South Queensland Correctional Centre to plead guilty to those offences which were committed while she was subject to parole and a suspended jail sentence.

Her solicitor Brad Skuse, of Skuse Graham Lawyers, told the court his client had spent 34 days in custody this time before sentence and upon her release she intended going into a rehabilitation program on the coast and to “distance herself from Toowoomba associates”.

Mr Skuse said Halaufia had suffered the loss of a partner and later a good friend in a car crash and that one of the stealing offences had been committed while she was intoxicated after the funeral of that friend.

Magistrate Kay Philipson told Halaufia the courts had given her every opportunity to rehabilitate in the past and that though a term of imprisonment was to be a sentence of last resort, she had reached that point.

Ms Philipson sentenced Halaufia to four months in jail but, declaring 34 days pre-sentence custody as time served, ordered she be eligible to apply for release on parole immediately which left the 25-year-old at the mercy of the parole board as to when she would be released.