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All five young people accused of a late night hammer attack on an unsuspecting householder have now pleaded guilty, after the last two women admitted the charges moments before their jury trial was due to start today.
Today, in Christchurch District Court Judge Phillip Moran accepted guilty pleas
from Katharine Marie Fitzgerald, 21, and Melodie Josephine Biddle, 20, a bartender.
Agreement on the charges they would plead to was reached just before the jury was to be selected, the Christchurch court website reported.
Crown prosecutor Shannon-Leigh Litt agreed to offer no evidence on the charge of aggravated burglary - which carries a maximum of 14 years imprisonment - if the women admitted charges of intentionally injuring the householder Dean Snelling, and assaulting him.
A third woman, Kylie Faye Fisher, 19, a cleaner, pleaded guilty to the same charges last week and is now in custody awaiting sentence.
All three women involved in the attack are now likely to be sentenced together on March 28.
It is now almost 17 months since the incident, which brought prison terms for the two men involved when they pleaded guilty last year.
Benjamin Edward Hodgetts, a 20-year-old pest control worker, was jailed for two years, and Tyson Robert Le Vavasour-Brown, a 19-year-old storeman, was jailed for two years and three months.
Fitzgerald and Biddle were both granted bail pending sentencing, and Judge Moran called for pre-sentence reports which will examine whether home detention or community detention are suitable sentences.
The incident began early on September 1 when two flatmates were drinking at a bar in central Christchurch and one of them met a 20-year-old woman and invited her back to his flat in Merivale.
At the flat, he got his flatmate to ask her to leave. She was upset when she returned to a bar in the city and told her drunk associates about it.
They decided to go back to the flat to retrieve some minor items of property she had left behind, and to abuse the two flatmates for their treatment of her.
The woman who had been asked to leave stayed in the car, while the other four went to the door, Hodgetts armed with a builder's hammer.
When they knocked on the door it was answered by Mr Snelling who knew nothing about what had happened earlier.
Mr Snelling was protesting his innocence, saying that they had the wrong person but he was placed in a headlock by Le Vavasour-Brown while Hodgetts began hitting him on the back with the hammer.
Mr Snelling was hit at least 15 times on the back before he was struck on the head and fell.
The two men then smashed more windows and Hodgetts smashed the windscreen of another flatmate's car parked in the driveway.
Mr Snelling received severe swelling, and bruising to the soft tissue in his back, head, and neck.
- NZPA