Jordyn Wiremu Kepa, 30, was jailed for three and a-half years and Kered Iris Christina Taylor, 23, was sentenced to six months’ home detention when they appeared before the Dunedin District Court on a variety of charges last week.
On May 5, after a dispute arose with her father over the care of a child, Taylor recruited Kepa and they drove to the man’s home.
They announced their arrival by kicking at the back door and yelling at the victim who was trying to pacify the young girl.
The defendants entered the house through an unlocked window, Kepa brandishing a knife.
"I’m going to f...... kill you," he told the victim.
The man handed over the child and ran for the front door but the pair tried to block his escape.
"Stab him, stab him," Taylor urged her co-defendant.
The court heard Kepa thrust the knife at the victim several times but he managed to flee unscathed.
Kepa chased him as Taylor put the girl into her car and drove after them.
A police summary described how, as she got level with her father, she mounted the footpath in an attempt to mow him down.
He leapt out of the way and she crashed into a wall.
The girl was unrestrained in the vehicle, court documents noted.
Kepa drove the damaged car away from the scene but was later stopped by police.
It can now be revealed that just days before the abduction, he was also arrested by armed police at a North Otago service station.
The BMW he was driving had been involved in a Dunedin shooting that month and when police stopped him they found a cut-down .22 rifle, along with 22 rounds of ammunition, in a bag on the passenger seat.
Kepa told officers he had just bought the car and had only found the weapon when cleaning it out.
The victim of the home invasion said he feared for his life during the break-in and now lived with all the doors and windows permanently locked.
"He continues to think about what happened ... about the fear and panic you instilled in him and his granddaughter that day," Judge Michael Turner said.
He said there was no sophistication in Kepa’s crimes but clear premeditation in the use of the knife.
The judge said there was insufficient evidence to determine whether the defendant was driven by his methamphetamine addiction but it was accepted he had a disadvantaged upbringing characterised by drug abuse and violence.
Taylor’s counsel Alex Bligh said her client — a first-time offender — was also using illicit substances at the time to cope with personal problems but was now "a different person".
The court heard Taylor had graduated from a rehabilitation programme and was now pregnant again.
Judge Dominic Flatley, who sentenced her, said the public would be "horrified" by what she did.
Taylor was banned from driving for six months.
rob.kidd@odt.co.nz , Court reporter
