A MAGISTRATE has warned a woman she’s looking at jail after she was caught by police falsifying an alibi for her boyfriend who was involved in a ram-raid in Tamworth.
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Aleshia Gardner pleaded guilty to hindering an investigation into the serious indictable offence of another in Tamworth Local Court this week after a brief of evidence was served, detailing her criminality. The 19-year-old provided false information in a witness statement to hinder the investigation by Tamworth Target Action Group (TAG) police into Dylan Lake, who has since pleaded guilty to the ram-raid of Country Auctions in Nemingha.
“It was a plea of not guilty, now it’s a plea of guilty,” Magistrate Darryl Pearce confirmed. “It’s a serious matter.”
Solicitor Patricia Simpson tendered written submissions, asking for the case to be dismissed without conviction because her client had never been in trouble with the law before.
“The humiliating and bewildering experience of attending court has clearly brought home to Ms Gardner the undoubted criminality of her actions, along with the embarrassment of having to explain the offence to her colleagues, friends and family,” she submitted.
According to police facts, Gardner was questioned by police about the whereabouts of her partner on the night of April 25 and told police she went out with friends and left her phone at home, but returned at 2am and Lake was in bed.
She also signed an official police statement, but TAG officers checked Gardner’s phone records and found she had been exchanging text messages that same night and into the early hours of the morning with Lake.
“It is clear from the nature of the text messages sent from Gardner’s phone, that she was the author of them,” police facts state, also adding Gardner “had knowledge” on May 4 that Lake had committed the aggravated break-and-enter at Country Auctions.
Ms Simpson said her client had “made an error of judgment” and it was “clearly out of character” for her.
“Although the statement did cause the police some extra work, it did not impact on the investigation to a degree that it halted the investigation,” she said in written submissions
“Ms Gardner put no thought or planning into her statement, it was committed on the spur of the moment.”
But Mr Pearce said the offence was “clearly not minor”, but rather involved “large amounts of cash [was] stolen”.
“I’m looking at a jail sentence,” he said.
He ordered a pre-sentence report to determine any options other than full time imprisonment, ahead of sentencing in December.
