{"id":437501,"date":"2026-05-21T00:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T00:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/437501\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T00:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T00:12:08","slug":"rotorua-hammer-attack-woman-who-popped-victims-eye-loses-sentence-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/437501\/","title":{"rendered":"Rotorua hammer attack: Woman who \u2018popped\u2019 victim\u2019s eye loses sentence appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">A hoodie was stolen on March 14, 2024, from the victim\u2019s house while she wasn\u2019t home.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">The victim\u2019s child believed Parkinson\u2019s son stole it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">The victim reported it to police, but later that day, she went to Parkinson\u2019s house and confronted her.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">The victim spoke to Parkinson, who remained inside her house and spoke to her out of a bathroom window. <\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">The conversation became argumentative and verbally abusive, and Parkinson started throwing bathroom products towards the victim through the window.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">The victim retreated to her car at the end of the driveway, and Parkinson\u2019s partner followed her to ensure she left.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">The victim was still yelling at Parkinson and her partner as she was leaving, which woke Parkinson\u2019s baby, who began screaming.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">This made Parkinson angry. She left the house and got a hammer from the deck. <\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">She approached the victim and swung the hammer, striking her knee. Several further swings didn\u2019t connect, but another swing got the victim in her left eye, which \u201cpopped\u201d, the appeal judgement said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">With the victim still on the ground holding her bleeding eye, Parkinson threw the hammer in the shed and went back into her house.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">The victim suffered a globe rupture and has lost sight in that eye permanently. She is awaiting surgery to have the eye removed, the judgment said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">Parkinson appealed against her sentence on the grounds that the judge\u2019s starting point was too high and that he didn\u2019t allow sufficient discounts, making the sentence manifestly excessive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">She also felt greater weight should have been given to the impacts of her imprisonment on her children when assessing whether she should be given home detention. Parkinson has her baby with her in prison. <\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">Parkinson\u2019s lawyer, Alexandra McPherson, raised several areas where they felt the judge didn\u2019t give enough discounts, including for Parkinson\u2019s remorse and background factors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">Justice Jane Anderson said the law must allow the appeal if it was satisfied that there was an error and the overall sentence was manifestly excessive. <\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">She said that, while the discount for personal factors in Parkinson\u2019s background was insufficient, the end sentence was not out of range.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cHere, there are aspects where the judge was generous, countering the insufficiency of other discounts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">One of the areas where Judge Bidois did not increase the sentence was when considering Parkinson\u2019s previous offending.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">She had several assault convictions, including a road rage incident in 2023 when she followed a driver to her workplace after objecting to the woman\u2019s driving, the judgment said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">On that occasion, Parkinson picked up a tyre iron, approached the victim, yelling and swearing, and swung the tyre iron multiple times with force, hitting the woman\u2019s vehicle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\">Justice Anderson said Judge Bidois applied an overall discount of 25% for personal mitigating factors, which was appropriate when considering the circumstances as a whole.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nAzlsRkyMsZOvyL\" style=\"display:none\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/author\/kelly-makiha\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kelly Makiha<\/a> is a senior journalist who has reported for the Rotorua Daily Post for more than 25 years, covering mainly police, court, human interest and social issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A hoodie was stolen on March 14, 2024, from the victim\u2019s house while she wasn\u2019t home. The victim\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[6375,89,3029,21140,11517,111,139,69,162710,1327,5763,213,8844,1299,1354],"class_list":["post-437501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-appeal","tag-attack","tag-eye","tag-hammer","tag-loses","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-popped","tag-rotorua","tag-sentence","tag-sports","tag-victims","tag-who","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437501","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=437501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}