Woman jailed for cleaning up shooting scene after alleged attempted murder in Spence

The mere existence of the woman's case was suppressed for about nine months, but it can now be revealed after she was sentenced in the ACT Magistrates Court on Thursday afternoon to another five months in jail.

Chief Magistrate Lorraine Walker agreed with lawyers for both the defence and prosecution, however, that the offender's identity should remain secret for legal reasons.

The offender, aged in her 30s, spent multiple years in custody at the Alexander Maconochie Centre before being granted parole in January.

Soon after, there was what Ms Walker called "a protracted digital exchange" between the woman and some people who wanted to harm a friend of hers because they thought he was "a kiddie fiddler".

This friend was at the woman's Housing ACT property in Spence early on March 11, when three intruders, alleged to be Sugimatatihuna Bernard Gabriel Mena, Bradley Joe Roberts and Rebecca Dulcie Parlov, broke in.

One of them, alleged to have been Mr Mena, shot the woman's friend in the face and torso with a sawn-off rifle before the invaders fled.

The three accused are all set to stand trial in the ACT Supreme Court after pleading not guilty to an aggravated burglary charge and, in Mr Mena's case, additional allegations that include attempted murder.

Following the incident, the woman tried to convince the shooting victim to let her take him to hospital.

He refused but ended up making his way to Calvary Hospital, where he was placed in a coma for the next week, through other means.

Meanwhile, police searched the woman's house soon after the incident and found blood-stained towels in the washing machine, as well as three spent shell casings in a bin.

When investigators arrested the woman, a mother of several children, on March 30, she acknowledged a shooting had occurred in her home.

But she would not disclose much more, saying words to the effect of: "I need to try and get my kids back. How can I do that when I have someone running through my house shooting people?"

In subsequent interviews, however, she stated she "went into cleaning mode" after the incident because she was stressed and scared.

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After initially declining to identify the intruders, she named those alleged to be responsible.

The woman eventually pleaded guilty in August to a charge of destroying or concealing evidence.

Sentencing the offender on Thursday, Ms Walker said a forensic psychologist believed the woman had experienced a "fight or flight" response to the incident and cleaned up the crime scene as an avoidance strategy.

The magistrate therefore found the woman's conduct had been motivated by self-protective factors, like wanting to keep police out of her life so she would not be returned to jail.

The court heard the woman's parole had been revoked following the incident and her cooperation with police was already widely known in criminal circles, leading to her being threatened and viewed as a "dog" in Canberra's prison.

Her house was also damaged by a fire, in what Ms Walker said the offender strongly suspended to be a reprisal attack associated with her cooperation, in June.

Ultimately, Ms Walker found a further five-month jail sentence to be the appropriate penalty.

While this term will not begin until 2023, when the woman's earlier sentence is set to expire, she is eligible to immediately apply to be released on parole again.

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