police<\/a> she had acquired the firearm and ammunition at the time she held a firearms licence, and initially denied shooting the vehicles.<\/p>\nHolloway said there was no independent evidence anyone saw her do it and Hearn felt it unfair that police were prepared to charge her but not the person she alleged had assaulted her.<\/p>\n
Police said discharging a firearm in a public place was inherently serious.<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Rebecca Terry said police understood the context, which would have been distressing for the defendant, but it was not the right way to deal with the grievance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe danger to the public needs to be underlined,\u201d Terry said.<\/p>\n
She said the victim had been approached about providing a statement, but had chosen not to.<\/p>\n
Judge Chris Macklin said premeditation was an aggravating feature and so was the extent of the damage.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of discharging a firearm in a public place, it has to be viewed at the most significant end.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were eight shots fired at two bits of valuable property and a significant amount of damage done to both,\u201d Judge Macklin said.<\/p>\n
He acknowledged the background of animosity between her and the victim, and that he wasn\u2019t unsympathetic to workplace bullying, but did not adjust the sentence because \u201cthere was no excuse\u201d to resorting to using a firearm.<\/p>\n
From a starting point of 10 months in prison, Hearn was given credit for her lack of any previous offending plus her guilty pleas to arrive at a sentence of seven months in prison commuted to four months\u2019 home detention with six months\u2019 post-detention conditions on the lead charge of discharging a firearm in a public place.<\/p>\n
An order was made for the destruction of the firearm.<\/p>\n
Animal rescue volunteer<\/p>\n
Hearn said she was now on a benefit and struggling financially but spent her time volunteering at a small, private animal rescue organisation.<\/p>\n
The owner told NZME she was stunned by Hearn\u2019s offending.<\/p>\n
She was aware of Hearn\u2019s lifelong struggles, and was always impressed with the level of patience and care she showed towards vulnerable animals.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need a lot of patience to work with animals and she is always so incredibly patient and kind.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe just loved the animals,\u201d the woman said.<\/p>\n
The 62-year-old talked publicly about a decade ago about undergoing gender reassignment surgery in Thailand, and her struggle at work after her transition.<\/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":"However, she accepted that did not entitle her to take matters into her own hands. Holloway said Hearn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[26676,534,87088,6799,56154,30701,20556,54239,26663,2082,2740,42,27501,6968,1345,296,49642,84351,91,43,26227,5161,7819,61,6382,40,38,41,39,6861,3608,4576],"class_list":["post-496317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-allegations","tag-amid","tag-bullied","tag-cars","tag-colleagues","tag-complaints","tag-detention","tag-diesel","tag-fired","tag-for","tag-former","tag-headlines","tag-heard","tag-hearn","tag-home","tag-into","tag-marie","tag-mechanic","tag-nelson","tag-news","tag-parked","tag-sentenced","tag-shooting","tag-to","tag-took","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-vehicles","tag-were","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496317","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=496317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}