By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A 48-year-old mum will fight charges of shoplifting a trampoline from a Kmart store just before last Christmas and then striking out and threatening to kill an accuser, a court heard.
The accused was with her two primary-school aged sons and an unknown male when she paid for bedding and a shirt at the self-serve pay terminal at Kmart in Fountain Gate on 22 December, police say.
At the same time, the trampoline in two boxes was loaded on a trolley and wheeled out of the store without payment, police told Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on 17 September.
The group breezed past a staff member who requested to see their receipt.
A customer, who said she saw the theft, followed and confronted the group to a taxi rank at Fountain Gate Hotel, the court heard.
The accused woman allegedly threatened to knock the witness’s “f***ing teeth out” and to “knock that smug look off her face”.
The accused then tried to strike the victim with her right hand. “I’m going to kill you, you f***ing c***,” she allegedly told the victim.
The trampoline, which was meanwhile wheeled away by the unknown male, was later recovered.
The woman’s children were escorted away by security staff, and the woman fled from the scene.
When rang by Narre Warren police to collect her kids, she told them to “let them go and they will find their own way home”.
The accused interjected in court to say that “I asked DHS and they said they were old enough to go home by themselves”.
The accused, despite advice from magistrate Pauline Spencer not to speak and potentially damage her case, said: “It’s all true, pretty much.”
The mother had relevant prior convictions, the court heard.
She also faced a mandatory four years driving disqualification over refusing a drug-driver test. A preliminary test found drugs in her system, but she refused to submit to follow-up tests, the court heard.
In pleading not guilty, defence lawyer Bernard Keating said the accused had assumed that the unknown male had paid for “his” trampoline.
CCTV stills showed that he was seen pushing the trolley through the check-out while the woman paid for her items.
“She says she wasn’t taking the trampoline. She already has a trampoline,” Mr Keating said.
Mr Keating said the accused denied threatening to kill the victim, but had told the victim to stop following her.
“The other way to look at it is the fact that she seems to be annoyed being accused of being a thief, and it was her understanding that the other person was going to pay for an item.”
A security guard, in a statement to police, had said the accused was “very aggressive and continued to yell at the young girl, making threats to kill the young girl”.
Mr Keating said the statement was a “narrative” but didn’t describe the exact words allegedly used.
Magistrate Pauline Spencer said there was an inference that the accused would have “clearly known” the trampoline was not paid for
Though the court needed to see the full CCTV video, it seemed like a “strong case”, Ms Spencer said.
The case was adjourned for a contest mention at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on 22 October.
