Desperate woman in break-in at motel

A Taranaki mother says she was so badly beaten she broke into a motel so she could wash the blood off her body before her children saw it.

Nichole Mary Nuku, 29, was charged after she broke a window to get into a room at the Auto Lodge Motel on Devon St East in New Plymouth.

She showered in the hotel room and used about $5 worth of bathroom products.

When she left the room she dropped a Countdown card registered to her mother on the floor.

Police found Nuku’s fingerprints on the window.

She was later charged with wilful damage and unlawfully being in a building for the September incident.

Yesterday she appeared in the New Plymouth District Court, where she also pleaded guilty to six charges of selling cannabis.

Nuku’s lawyer, Nathan Bourke, told Judge Philip Crayton the only reason his client had broken into the hotel room was because she wanted to wash blood off herself after a domestic violence incident.

‘‘Miss Nuku had received a hiding and she was covered in blood, sir,’’ Bourke said.

‘‘She did not want to go back to her mother’s where her two children were, covered in blood.

‘‘She made the decision to jimmy the window and used the motel purely to have a shower, and that is all. She wasn’t in there taking TVs.

‘‘It is difficult to fathom how low you could be at when you are having to break into somewhere to have a shower to wash the blood off you.’’

Bourke said Nuku had returned to New Zealand with her two young children about a year ago, to look after her mother who has cancer. ‘‘It’s fair to say she fell in with the wrong crowd.’’

In relation to the July cannabis charges, Bourke said he had read through several months of text messages from Nuku.

As well as offering to sell cannabis on six occasions, Nuku’s text messages also detailed her financial situation.

‘‘There are messages to family and friends saying ‘I can’t feed my family. Can you lend me some money’,’’ Bourke said.

‘‘Also, in desperation, there are these messages which are just simply, ‘hey do you want to buy something’. In almost all of them, nothing goes through.’’

Judge Crayton acknowledged that Nuku was under desperate circumstances but said she had a criminal history which included drugs, violence and dishonesty.

In regards to the charges for breaking into the motel room, Crayton said they had been the result of a ‘‘particularly unhealthy relationship’’.

He sentenced Nuku to 12 months of supervision, 80 hours of community work and ordered she pay $150 in reparation to the Auto Lodge for the broken window.

He said he hoped supervision would help Nuku to get her life back on track.