A Coolah woman who assaulted two victims in their bed and threatened one of them after she’d been charged, was sentenced to 22 months imprisonment with a non-parole period of 16 months when she appeared in Mudgee Local Court on Wednesday.
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Ashleigh Marie Wicks, aged 28, has appealed the severity of that sentence but was refused bail for the lead-up to Monday, March 11, when the appeal will be heard in Dubbo District Court.
At about 1am on Friday, April 6, 2018, the victims were in bed and were woken by noise at the back on their house then knocking on the bedroom door.
Wicks entered the room and said “I know there are children in the house, if you don’t want me to schiz out here come out the front, otherwise I’ll schiz out here” and said the encounter was because one of the victims “got a problem with me”.
She was told to leave, but she attempted to pull one of the victims out of the bed before striking their collarbone and the other victim’s face.
Wicks then began throwing objects from a dresser, before removing a drawer and launching it across the room hitting one of the victims in the head, causing a 4cm laceration that required a towel to stem the bleeding.
On Tuesday, June 5, 2018, Wicks sent one of the victims a message regarding their statement to police for the April incident.
The victim reported it to police and they were speaking to an officer when Wicks rang them.
She told them to “drop” their statement and said she wasn’t “done with” the other victim. And spoke about the likelihood of her being sentenced to imprisonment, in the event of that happening she asked “what have I got to lose?”
Wicks was charged with; ‘Enter building with intent to commit an indictable offence’; ‘Assault occasioning actual bodily harm’; ‘Common assault’; and ‘Threaten/cause injury/harm to prevent information to police’.
Her legal-aid solicitor Matthew Quill submitted that the first incident was “not planned, it was ill considered” and that his client’s actions in the second could be put down to “naivety”.
However, Magistrate David Day showed the bail acknowledgement that was signed by Wicks, instructing her not to interfere with the victims while “at conditional liberty”.
That charge in particular drew the ire of His Honour and he said attempting to influence the victim in that manner “strikes at the heart of the criminal justice system”.
