Shae Templeton bashed cabbie, smashed his phone in Hobart

“I’m not usually violent,” says a Tasmanian woman who bashed a cabbie that made the error of asking her and another for a down payment. She also has a conviction for aggravated armed robbery.

Evandale woman Shae Anne Templeton, 27. Picture: Facebook

A Tasmanian woman and her male friend flew into a rage when a taxi driver asked them for a down payment on the trip, the pair savagely bashing him outside a busy service station.

Evandale woman Shae Anne Templeton, 27, pleaded guilty in Launceston Magistrates Court to seven charges, most seriously bashing the taxi driver on August 8 last year outside the North Hobart Shell Coles Express servo and smashing his iPhone.

She also pleaded guilty to two charges of possessing cannabis, possessing ammunition, failing to appear and breaching bail.

The court heard that about 8.30pm, the victim taxi driver received a job to take ‘John’ from North Hobart to Oakdowns.

Templeton and another man got into the back seat, while a second man sat in the front.

When the driver asked for a down payment, Templeton and her friend became incensed, the man demanding to know, “Why the f*** have I got to pay you.”

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Templeton’s friend hurled racial epithets at the driver, while Templeton attempted to lower the temperature by assuring the driver they could pay upon arrival.

The driver then exited the vehicle and opened the rear doors to get the duo to leave. The man sitting in the front seat fled, fearing things were about to lead to police involvement.

He was right. When the driver refused to accept Templeton’s ID document as collateral, she pushed him backwards onto a pile of firewood and unleashed a flurry of punches in his direction. One of them connected with his face.

The driver fled into the servo, but re-emerged when he saw Templeton pilfer his iPhone and fuel card for the vehicle. When he asked for it back, she launched it onto the cement, obliterating it.

The court heard the driver picked it up and attempted to call triple-0, but Templeton’s friend then struck him several times to the back of the head.

The pair were arrested. A search of Templeton’s bag uncovered two clipseal bags of cannabis and 17 rounds of ammunition of various calibres.

Templeton told Magistrate Simon Brown she had attempted to be good in the three years since her sentence for an aggravated armed robbery committed in 2013.

“I was not planning on coming back to court. I was keeping the wrong company. I’m looking at changing, I’ve got another job,” she told Mr Brown.

Templeton – who will start her new gig milking cows at Mole Creek in the coming fortnight, said she was “not usually a violent person”.

Mr Brown fined her $1000, ordered she pay costs and levies of $372, and recorded convictions.