A mother of five has been spared a jail term over a baseball bat attack because it would ruin the lives of her children, a court has heard.
Kelly Maxine Bennett (37) did not use the weapon but drove the attacker, Chloe Jane Barwick, to where the incident happened on June 18 last year. On the way, she texted another friend to say they were going to ``waste'' the victim.
Bennett pleaded guilty in the Dunedin District Court to a reduced charge of injuring with intent to injure.
She had agreed to give Barwick a lift to the Dunedin address, knowing there was going to be a physical confrontation, Judge Kevin Phillips said at sentencing last week.
The victim clearly knew it was coming, too. She had used furniture to barricade herself inside her bedroom.
But Bennett and Barwick forced their way in to confront the woman about some ``property''. They found the victim on her bed, holding a pair of scissors.
Barwick picked up a baseball bat and after a heated verbal exchange ``whacked'' the woman over the head. The blow opened up a gash over her right eye and knocked her to the floor.
Barwick hit her again over the back of the head before Bennett grabbed the weapon from her.
``The violence that actually occurred was never in her contemplation.
What she was faced with was something that had spun out of control,'' counsel John Westgate said.
Mr Westgate accepted what happened after the violent incident did not reflect well on his client.
The baseball bat was given to another flatmate as the assailants left and they were told to get rid of it.
The court heard Bennett later spoke to the mother of that person to find out whether the weapon had been disposed of.
The victim received eight stitches in her head and experienced recurring headaches and trouble with memory after the incident.
Still, she was empathetic to the defendants' plight.
``I don't want this to ruin Kelly and Chloe's lives and affect their children but they need to realise you can't go around doing this sort of thing to people,'' she wrote in a statement.
The judge, too, was concerned about the potential impact on Bennett's children of having their mother incarcerated or housebound on home detention.
``I don't intend to ruin your children's lives,'' Judge Phillips said.
Bennett was sentenced to six months' community detention (with a weekend curfew), 250 hours' community work and ordered to pay the victim $600.
Barwick was due to be sentenced last week but failed to attend court. A warrant was issued for her arrest.
