{"id":195914,"date":"2025-12-22T05:51:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T05:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/195914\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T05:51:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T05:51:08","slug":"nelson-mechanic-marie-hearn-pleads-guilty-to-shooting-colleagues-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/195914\/","title":{"rendered":"Nelson mechanic Marie Hearn pleads guilty to shooting colleague\u2019s cars"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the police summary of facts<\/a>, she fired about eight rounds at the two cars, hitting both of them.<\/p>\n

The bullet holes were consistent with a smaller-calibre rifle round, police said.<\/p>\n

On September 16, police searched the workplace premises and found Hearn with 59 rounds of .22 calibre ammunition.<\/p>\n

Police said the ammunition was in a toolbox. <\/p>\n

On the same day, police searched Hearn\u2019s Nelson home and found 21 shotgun rounds.<\/p>\n

They also found a .22 rifle stored beneath the house.<\/p>\n

Hearn told police she had acquired the firearm and ammunition at the time she held a firearms licence, and denied shooting the vehicles.<\/p>\n

In court, she appeared nervous during her brief plea appearance, where she was convicted and remanded on bail before sentencing in May.<\/p>\n

Hearn\u2019s lawyer alleged workplace bullying was behind her actions.<\/p>\n

NZME approached the general manager of the firm where Hearn worked, who was unable to comment until after sentencing.<\/p>\n

He confirmed that Hearn was formerly known as Dave Hearn. <\/p>\n

Hearn, a diesel mechanic, talked publicly about a decade ago about undergoing gender reassignment surgery<\/a> in Thailand.<\/p>\n

She told Stuff in 2016 that after her transition, she struggled at work where there was \u201cno place for wigs at a workshop\u201d, and makeup was a waste of time when it \u201cruns down your face after the first 30 minutes\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said her main goal was to have people call her Marie.<\/p>\n

Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ\u2019s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to the police summary of facts, she fired about eight rounds at the two cars, hitting both…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[26676,534,51075,3620,6799,11520,56154,54239,13845,3368,42,6968,296,49642,84351,91,43,7497,3367,75700,7819,10117,61,40,38,41,39,17708],"class_list":["post-195914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-allegations","tag-amid","tag-bullets","tag-bullying","tag-cars","tag-colleague","tag-colleagues","tag-diesel","tag-eight","tag-guilty","tag-headlines","tag-hearn","tag-into","tag-marie","tag-mechanic","tag-nelson","tag-news","tag-owned","tag-pleads","tag-rounds","tag-shooting","tag-shot","tag-to","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-workplace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195914","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=195914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}