'She's obviously got no remorse': Elderly man fumes at home invasion attacker's court win

Ian Noble, the victim of a brutal home invasion in his Hastings home, pictured in December 2017. Photo / Warren Buckland

A woman who attacked an elderly man with a hammer during a home invasion in Hastings has had her 12-year jail sentence reduced by 18 months on appeal.

Dominique Kerehoma Rachel Carroll and a teenage accomplice left Ian Noble for dead in his Hastings home in 2016.

Carroll was sentenced in the Napier District Court in 2017 after a jury found the then 30-year-old guilty of burglary with a weapon and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm in a four-day trial.

Carroll's co-offender, Chanel Te Ana Allen, who was 17 at the time of the attack, was sentenced to six years' jail for her involvement in the home invasion.

The pair raided Noble's Heretaunga St East home, leaving him unconscious with facial fractures and fingers smashed after trying to protect himself from the blows.

Noble, now 80, said he was disappointed that Carroll had appealed her sentence.

"I think she's just doing it because she can - she's obviously got no remorse whatsoever for what she did.

"I'm constantly reminded of the incident because the nerve damage still affects my left eye and I still suffer some pain in my hand.

"I'm lucky to be alive because if I hadn't have come to I would have been lying there bleeding to death."

Allen initiated the raid having been piqued at being ignored by a former boarder of Noble's, but it was Carroll who bashed him with a hammer before the pair fled the scene in his car.

Judge Tony Adeane said she used the hammer to smash through glass on the front door and gain entry to the home before delivering blows and kicks to the elderly man; some of which were when he was unconscious.

The pair then plundered Noble's home of its modest contents and fled the scene in his car, leaving him for dead.

A Court of Appeal judgement from April, released on Tuesday, said Carroll had abandoned an appeal against conviction but had maintained one against sentence.

The judgment quashed her sentence and substituted concurrent sentences of 10 years and six months' imprisonment in its place.

The Court of Appeal found Judge Adeane had not been privy to a subsequently completed cultural report that showed Carroll's troubled upbringing.

The report, written by Shelley Turner, found Carroll was raised as the whāngai child of her maternal grandmother because both parents had substance abuse issues.

"She experienced a low standard of living, severe physical discipline, and sexual abuse at the hands of a partner of her grandmother.

Carroll withdrew from the education system after fourth form with no formal qualifications, and in 2006 was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for driving offences and a spate of offences of dishonesty.

"She then settled into steady employment in a shearing gang and met the father of her children. Unfortunately he was deported as an overstayer in 2014 and this appears to have had a serious impact upon her."

"She became involved with the Mongrel Mob. Concern about her drug use led to her children being removed from her care in 2015."

The Court of Appeal judgment said Turner's report "identifies mitigating circumstances, and it points to genuine prospects of rehabilitation".

The judgment also said that Adeane had erred by declining credit for Carroll's time spent on electronically monitored bail on the ground that she was lucky to get bail in the first
place.

Carroll spent 10 months on EM bail with one breach.

"In the circumstances, we consider that a modest allowance was appropriate," the judgment said.

Claims that Judge Adeane had erred by sentencing her based on facts not proved at trial, adopting a starting point that was too high, and distorting the seriousness of the offending were dismissed by the Court of Appeal.