By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A 23-YEAR-OLD ice and heroin user has threatened to kill herself and her two infants in a public custody fight with her own mother, a court has heard.
The pregnant woman pleaded guilty to breaching a corrections order as well as a full intervention order protecting her mother, her children and her siblings.
On 6 July, she yelled at her mother in Dandenong Market car park: “If you don’t allow me to have my kids, I will kill them and kill myself.”
The accused followed her mother, who drove the children to a relative’s home and repeated the threat.
According to a police summary, the victim was “greatly affected by her substance abuse” and was “very capable of carrying out her threat”.
The accused’s mother told police she feared the woman would break into her house and take the children at night, or kill them and herself.
On 26 October, police found her with a syringe of ice on her person and another in her handbag as she sat in a car outside a 7/11 store in Hallam with two male associates.
Also in her bag were 15 ecstasy tablets, an oxycodone tablet and a folding knife.
The accused had also recently been arrested with a male for both trying to steal shoes by wearing them at Kmart in Fountain Gate shopping centre.
A defence lawyer told the court that the pregnant accused was motivated to change her ways, having sobered up in custody during the past month.
She was determined to earn the right to get her kids back, the court heard.
“Being in prison was a big wake-up call for me,” the accused told the court.
“It has to be,” magistrate Jack Vandersteen replied. She was otherwise headed for a life in and out of prison and without her kids, he said.
Mr Vandersteen told the accused it was frustrating to see children follow their parents into the court system.
“The more stable you are, the more stable they’ll be.”
The accused was sentenced to 31 days’ jail – already served in remand – and a 12-month supervised community corrections order with drug and mental health treatment.
