Police became involved after the victim’s wife noticed the money missing from the couple’s accounts and had the bank freeze them.
Police happened to be at the man’s business on January 14, 2021, when he received another phone call from Winter demanding money. He encouraged her to come to the premises, where officers intervened.
Winter later told police the victim was a “dirty old man doing stuff to young girls”, that none of the money was for her but for a girl the man tried to touch. She said all the money she had received was spent or transferred to members of her family.
The meth and assault charges related to Winter’s arrest in 2021 at the end of the police operation Horizon — a crackdown on organised crime and gang-related offending in Wairoa.
Winter’s younger sister Aria Hubbard, 33, and Hubbard’s partner Samson Edwards, 29, were the principal offenders. Winter had mainly acted as a “shopkeeper” in their two busy meth enterprises in Wairoa — one run out of Hubbard’s family home in Apatu Street, the other from a house in Karaka Street.
She had also buried several cellphones for Hubbard so police wouldn’t find them.
Other than a sale of 28g of meth for $8000, police weren’t able to quantify the exact amount of the drug Winter had sold. However, intercepted phone calls and text messages showed she had facilitated numerous sales.
The judge said he could infer the amount was substantial given Hubbard’s business was turning over thousands of dollars a day in sales.
Winter was at Apatu Street when police arrested her. She had about 2.5grams of meth packaged into small bags for sale and $1210 cash.
Her assault of the boy happened as she tried to hide the bags of meth in her mouth and keep officers from recovering them. She used the boy like a shield, deliberately applying pressure to his neck and chest. Officers said the boy began looking distressed. Winter’s grip on him was so tight that a detective had to use both hands to prise him from her. She spat the meth out.
Judge Cathcart set stand-alone starting points of imprisonment for each of the offences — three years, two months, for the obtaining by deception charge; two years, two months, for the meth offending; and eight months for the assault.
He reduced the nominal end sentence from six years to five years imprisonment, for totality.
He gave 11 months discount for pleas where they applied and 20 percent discount for matters contained in various pre-sentence reports before the courts, including information that clearly showed Winter’s offending was driven by her meth addiction.
The content of a section 27 report didn’t surprise him, the judge said. Growing up, Winter had been exposed to many of the factors that contribute to crime, including social and economic deprivation, normalisation of violence, gangs, substance abuse, the loss of a parent and gang association.
The judge also noted Winter had recently given birth to her eighth child — the only child remaining in her care — and that a Supreme Court directive required judges to consider the impact of sentencing on children and to exercise compassion.
There was six months discount for remorse.
The judge gave Winter a further five months discount for her time on electronically-monitored bail. However, he noted it was only granted on appeal to the High Court mainly due to the pending birth of her child. It had also enabled her to go to a residential rehabilitation programme, after which she had been invited to stay on as a mentor. However, bail was then revoked after she blatantly breached it by taking unapproved absences.
Even if the sentence had come within range, he wouldn’t have converted it to home detention due to Winter’s poor compliance on bail, Judge Cathcart said.
