The bus station attack<\/a> happened at the Hamilton Central Bus Depot about 5.20pm on March 10 this year.<\/p>\nThe victim was waiting for a bus when Tiopira walked up to her and kicked her without warning, before throwing a \u201cflurry of punches\u201d to her head, causing her to fall to the ground.<\/p>\n
Tiopira bent over and grabbed the victim by her hair with a closed fist, before punching her in the head with her other fist as the victim lay on the ground.<\/p>\n
The other assault happened at Mill St Pak\u2019nSave on November 23, when Tiopira and her co-offender were in the store.<\/p>\n
Tiopira put two Lewis Road chocolate milk bottles in her shoulder bag, while her co-offender put two pies and an energy drink down his pants.<\/p>\n
They were confronted as they left the self-checkout area, and the staff member was able to recover one bottle of milk.<\/p>\n
However, Tiopira then tried to jump the exit gates before the staff member grabbed her shoulder bag with the chocolate milk inside.<\/p>\n
Tiopira made \u201cmultiple\u201d attempts to hit the victim in the face, and was successful \u201ca couple\u201d of times, court documents state.<\/p>\n
Tiopira and her co-offender then fled the store with the items.<\/p>\n
\u2018A complete surprise attack\u2019<\/p>\n
In sentencing Tiopira, Judge Crayton labelled it a \u201ccomplete surprise attack in circumstances where they were not able to defend themselves\u201d.<\/p>\n
It\u2019d had a serious impact on the bus depot victim.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was here visiting her mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe hoped to only be here a short amount of time.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has suffered significant injuries and consequences of your violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
That included ongoing dizziness, nausea, not being able to work or return home, and losing her job.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe emotional effect is she now is not feeling safe in New Zealand the way she once did.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018People should feel safe in a public space\u2019<\/p>\n
Of the supermarket offence, the judge said: \u201cIf you attack someone who is merely doing their job, trying to stop you from doing crime, then plainly there is a need to deter you and protect them.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said Tiopira had a \u201cvery poor\u201d criminal history, with convictions in February last year of assaulting a child and injuring with intent to injure, for which she was jailed for 13 months.<\/p>\n
She also had dishonesty and assault convictions stretching back to 2019.<\/p>\n
Judge Crayton took an overall starting point of 21 months before allowing credits of 25%, allowing for her plea, background, and remorse.<\/p>\n
He got down to 15 months\u2019 and three weeks\u2019 jail before then considering home detention.<\/p>\n
Tiopira had a property available, but the judge said he was \u201cconfronted by the fact that this was an unprovoked and significantly violent attack in a public place where everyone should feel safe, at the bus depot\u201d.<\/p>\n
He also noted that she wouldn\u2019t have been out of jail long after her most recent stint, before carrying out this attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the circumstances I am not satisfied that commuting to home detention would … deter you from further offending .. .and protect the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Tiopira had already been in custody about four months, he noted she would likely be released in a further three months.<\/p>\n
She would then be subject to six months of prison release conditions.<\/p>\n
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 11 years and has been a journalist for 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Delivered a flurry of punches\u2019 The bus station attack happened at the Hamilton Central Bus Depot about 5.20pm…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[168926,30482,2082,1364,1345,111,43,139,69,276597,37451,24002,276598,1524,10510,1354],"class_list":["post-562421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-bashes","tag-bus","tag-for","tag-her","tag-home","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-saige","tag-sitting","tag-stranger","tag-tiopira","tag-waikato","tag-waiting","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562421","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=562421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}