A woman has been jailed after slashing her partner's face with a broken bottle, causing a wound down his cheek that required 12 stitches.
Anna Awhina Eagle, 33, appeared for sentencing in the Napier District Court today. She had pleaded guilty earlier to wounding her partner, Nathan Kingi, 37, with intent, and threatening grievous bodily harm to a woman to whom he was speaking when she attacked him.
She had also admitted assault after earlier breaking a bottle over her sister's head.
The court was told that when Eagle attacked Kingi with the broken bottle at the Marewa shopping centre in Napier, she caused a large, gaping wound 1cm wide.
"This is serious violence, Ms Eagle," Judge Gordon Matenga told the defendant, who appeared from prison via an audio-visual link.
"You struck at him, deliberately at his face, injuring his cheek. I've seen a photograph – it's a very significant injury."
The judge said that on October 30 last year, Eagle had been asked to leave her sister's house in Napier.
She went outside, picked up an empty beer bottle, and without provocation smashed it over her sister's head with such force that it broke. Her sister sustained minor injuries.
A few days later, on November 6, Eagle and Kingi were at the Marewa shops and Kingi was talking to a woman who had been begging there.
The woman was a former girlfriend of Kingi's and Eagle became upset, the judge said.
She went to a nearby service lane, found a bottle, broke it, returned and offered Kingi a cigarette.
When he moved to accept it, Eagle cut his cheek open.
She then told the woman Kingi had been talking to that she was next, before leaving.
Judge Matenga sentenced Eagle, who has already been in custody for 165 days, to 24 months in prison.
He granted her leave to apply for home detention if a suitable address could be found at which to serve it, or if she was able to get onto a residential rehabilitation programme.
He convicted and discharged her on two charges of failing to answer bail and remitted $3300 in outstanding fines.
The court was told that Eagle had three previous convictions for violent offending – in 2002, 2012 and 2020.