A woman who last week beat a murder charge was arrested for stealing a leg of lamb and a box of ice creams just one week before she was to stand trial, it has been revealed.
Natalie Theresa Ford, 44, was found not guilty by a High Court jury in Auckland for the murder of her former partner, Gary Marshall, in Orewa, north of Auckland, in 2010.
Ford was back before the court today, but this time the stakes were not nearly as high: she was charged with stealing a leg of lamb and a box of Magnum ice creams, valued at $48.80, from Pak 'N Save in Sylvia Park, east Auckland.
The theft happened on July 26, just one week before she was to go on trial for murder.
She appeared before a community magistrate in Auckland District Court today and was told that if she did not offend again in the next nine months she would not be sentenced.
During her trial for murder, Ford told the jury of a brutal assault on her by Mr Marshall, during which he punched her head, smashed her into a door frame and then a kitchen bench and kicked her on the floor.
The court was told she stabbed him so hard that the whole 18cm blade disappeared into his rib cage, puncturing his lung and piercing the pulmonary artery. He was dead within minutes.
The jury found her not guilty on the grounds she acted in self defence.
