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$27,000 bill for driveway graffiti
A 23-year-old unemployed mother of two ? now six months pregnant ? is facing a $27,625 damage bill after taking graffiti offending to a monumental level.
She gauged graffiti into the concrete of a driveway that had just been laid as an EQC repair. The insurance company is seeking the cost of relaying the whole driveway.
Jasmine Ngamuri Moana pleaded guilty at Christchurch District Court yesterday to a charge of intentional damage, and Judge David Saunders remanded her to November 7 for sentence.
He granted bail, and ordered a pre-sentence report and a report on her ability to pay reparations for the damage.
He said her record showed offending for disorderly behaviour and breach of supervision, and intoxication had been a factor in the latest offending.
She has served jail terms for a street robbery, assaults, and theft.
Defence counsel Kirsty May said: ?I?m not sure that reparations is a realistic expectation.?
She suggested that the insurance company might consider taking civil action to try to recover the money, after Judge Saunders said it seemed ?an extraordinary amount of remedial work? had been necessary.
The police provided photographs of the damage.
Police prosecutor Sergeant Dave Murray said that about 10pm on July 17, Moana was with her friends at a house in Puna Street, Riccarton.
When a taxi arrived to pick them up, Moana repeatedly refused to get in.
She then used an implement to write words into the newly laid concrete driveway. The graffiti covered a large area, causing extensive damage.
May said Moana was six months pregnant. She asked for her curfew bail condition to be relaxed so that she could stay some nights with her two children, aged one and three, who were in Child, Youth, and Family care.
Judge Saunders deleted the curfew for the remand for sentencing.
