Stoush outside supermarket becomes brutal back stabbing

Japanese kitchen deba knife bloody on wood background

A woman stabbed her partner in the back with a kitchen knife during a domestic stoush that began in a supermarket carpark.

Alisia Taylor, 28, whose case was transferred to Gisborne District Court from Levin, was hoping to get home detention for that incident and for further domestic offending since.

But on Tuesday, Judge Tony Couch instead jailed her for two years, four months.

Police were called to the carpark of the Levin supermarket on September 17, 2022. Taylor and her partner — dressed only in his undies — were both intoxicated.

Officers calmed them down and gave them a lift home, but once there, the couple started fghting again.

Taylor grabbed a large kitchen knife that had a blade about 35-centimetres long, and plunged it into her partner’s back, causing a deep wound that bled profusely.

The couple were still arguing when police and an ambulance arrived a short time later.

Officers tried to handcuff Taylor but she resisted and pulled away, falling on to a fence and breaking part of it. Later at the police station, she spat in a constable’s face and refused to give up her blood-soaked clothes.

When police tried to remove the clothes, she punched an officer in the jaw and stomach and kicked another officer in the leg.

A sergeant stepped in to help his colleagues but Taylor bit him on the arm, tearing off a piece of skin and causing an open wound.

Charged with intentionally injuring her partner, wounding the sergeant and assaulting the four officers, Taylor maintained not guilty pleas for four months before changing them after a sentence indication from Judge Bruce Northwood in Levin.

The sentencing itself was delayed and on August 5, last year — while still on bail — Taylor accumulated two more charges for assaulting police when they were called to another family harm incident involving her.

Arrested for breaching bail, Taylor was allowed to go back into the house to say goodnight to a boy but got into a physical altercation with her mother.

When police intervened, she headbutted one of the constables and kicked the other in the thigh.

Though not bound to uphold Judge Northwood’s earlier indicated sentence starting point of three years, eight months, imprisonment for the September offending, Judge Couch adopted it, applying two months uplift for the later offending.

The judge upheld the 25 percent discount Judge Northwood had indicated for guilty pleas but noted it was generous in the circumstances.

There was five months discount for Taylor’s remorse, including her participation in restorative justice with one of the constables, and a further 5 percent discount for personal and background factors.

The end sentence was 28½ months but the judge rounded it down to the one he imposed.

In submissions, counsel Heather Vaughn said home detention was an appropriate outcome.

Ms Vaughn pointed to a link between Taylor’s exposure to violence as a child and violence she had suffered in her adult relationship, including an altercation in which she lost an eye.

Ms Vaughn said Taylor had secured a suitable house at which to serve an electronically monitored sentence and had full-time care of an eight year-old.

Given her relatively young age, Taylor had good prospects of rehabilitation, Ms Vaughn said.