Occupant lured away by burglars, jury told

Gisborne Courthouse. File picture by Rebecca Grunwell

TIRED after a day’s work at his marae, a Te Karaka man was cooking and watching his favourite TV show when a stranger knocked at the door, seeking a lift to Gisborne.

The Crown believed she was trying to get him to leave so accomplices could burgle the house, prosecutor Jo Rielly told a jury in Gisborne District Court yesterday.

The woman had earlier turned up in a car with two others, asking directions to the shop.

When she arrived back at the property, she was alone. She told the man a friend she came to Te Karaka to visit was not home. People she was with earlier had gone. They were just some people she had paid to give her a lift.

After reluctantly agreeing to return her to Gisborne, the man drove her as requested to Makaraka, where he noticed a red sports car. He did a few errands in town, before returning home.

When he got back, the property he was house-sitting had been burgled.

Jammie Vera Rigby, 31, has pleaded not guilty to a jointly-laid charge of burglary arising out of the incident on October 23 last year.

Her trial continued today. Judge Warren Cathcart is presiding.

Prosecutor Jo Rielly told jurors that in law, someone who acted as an accomplice in the way the Crown believed Rigby had, was equally culpable as those who carried out the burglary.

In this trial, jurors had to decide whether Rigby intended to assist those who burgled the Te Karaka house and whether she knew they intended to burgle that house.

About 1.30pm the day after the burglary, Rigby and another female, Karma Cyntilla Cripps, 31, were videoed fleeing a Matthews Road property, where they had been involved in another burglary. (Rigby pleaded guilty in respect of that house.)

The occupant arrived home while they were there, videoed them, and phoned police.

A male co-accused, Dartelle Rigby, who remained at the scene, was standing by a car that contained shoes taken from that house, along with jewellery, perfume and keys to a marae, stolen in the Te Karaka burglary.

That evening, a police officer pulled over a red sports car because it was missing a front number plate.

There were women in it, one of whom he noticed looked like a woman in the video from the Matthews Road burglary. Rigby and Cripps were arrested. In that car was a distinctive duvet taken from the Te Karaka house.

Mrs Rielly told jurors that agreed facts in the trial included that Karma Cripps was involved in the Te Karaka burglary and that Jammie Rigby was involved in the Matthews Road one.

Jammie Rigby is represented by counsel Nicola Wright.

Proceeding