{"id":165310,"date":"2025-12-03T02:33:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T02:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/165310\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T02:33:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T02:33:16","slug":"insanity-defence-sought-in-case-of-2yo-found-in-bus-luggage-compartment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/165310\/","title":{"rendered":"Insanity defence sought in case of 2yo found in bus luggage compartment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 27-year-old Northland woman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.1news.co.nz\/2025\/08\/04\/woman-in-court-after-2yo-found-in-suitcase-in-bus-luggage-compartment\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">charged with neglect <\/a>after a two-year-old girl was discovered alive in a suitcase on board an Intercity bus is seeking a defence of insanity.<\/p>\n<p>This was confirmed in the Auckland District Court today by the woman&#8217;s lawyer, Kate Goodman-Creed. She said she had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.1news.co.nz\/2025\/08\/13\/child-in-suitcase-fitness-to-stand-trial-raised-as-woman-in-court\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">sought a psychiatric report<\/a>, which would be referred to the Crown, for it to assess and decide whether to commission one of its own. <\/p>\n<p>Under the Criminal Procedure (Mentally Impaired Persons) Act, a court can find a case against a person is proven, but can rule they are not criminally responsible by reason of insanity.<\/p>\n<p>The Court set a date in June next year for a jury trial, should it be required.<\/p>\n<p>The charges of neglect and ill treatment followed an incident in August, when an Intercity bus driver discovered the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.1news.co.nz\/2025\/08\/05\/woman-charged-after-toddler-found-inside-suitcase-denied-bail\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">two-year-old alive in the luggage compartment<\/a> during a scheduled stop in Kaiwaka, during a trip from Whang\u0101rei to Auckland.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, police said the driver noticed a bag was moving and opened it to discover the girl, who was taken to the hospital. <\/p>\n<p>Police allege the girl faced serious health risks, including suffocation, carbon monoxide poisoning and psychological trauma.<\/p>\n<p>The accused woman is on bail and has permanent name suppression.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 27-year-old Northland woman charged with neglect after a two-year-old girl was discovered alive in a suitcase on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,67,111,43,139,1067,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-165310","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-auckland","9":"tag-crime-and-justice","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-northland","14":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}