Kiwi wept during Bali drugs raid
The supervisor of the villa where a Kiwi was arrested in Bali on drug charges has said Leeza Tracey Ormsby wept during a police raid and repeatedly told them, ‘‘I don’t know’’.
Ormsby, 37, also known as Leeza Morrison, had a key to the villa where police uncovered marijuana and ecstasy, a Kuta resort worker said.
About six officers, apparently acting on a tipoff, approached Ormsby as she went to enter the villa. It had been rented for three nights by an Australian man known only as Azaria, the Herald Sun reported. Azaria and his girlfriend flew home the night before the raid on Wednesday last week.
The villa’s supervisor, Gede Wijaya, was on duty when police asked him to witness the search.
When police found what looked like hashish in Ormsby’s handbag, and asked her what it was, she replied, ‘‘I don’t know, I don’t know’’, Wijaya told the Sun.
Throughout the discovery of the drugs – 132 grams of ecstasy and 27g of hashish – and then tape, plastic wrappers, and an electric scale, Ormsby maintained her ig- norance. She appeared to be crying, Wijaya said.
Ormsby, who was born in Rotorua and lives in Sydney, was arrested but, by yesterday, had not yet been charged.
Wijaya said he was unsure if there was a party at the villa the night before Ormsby’s arrest but said ‘‘several friends’’ had visited the Australian man in the hours before his departure.
According to her lawyer, Ary B Soenardi, Ormsby is unemployed and arrived in Bali to visit a friend just a few days before her arrest.
Ormsby denied any wrong- doing, Soenardi said. ‘‘Definitely, she’s not admitting it because she didn’t feel she did it.’’
His client was ‘‘a little bit stressed and disturbed’’, particularly since hearing the media were reporting her predicament.
When he visited on Tuesday, he took her books on how to speak basic Indonesian. ‘‘At that time, she was in a cell with a group of four women prisoner. She sleeps on a mat.’’
Soenardi said Ormsby’s family were in New Zealand, but she had seen one visitor.
One of Ormsby’s
Sydney flatmates, James, said Ormsby had stopped going to her job as a shop assistant. ‘‘She said she was stressed and needed to get away from everything – life was getting too much,’’ he told the Australian magazine Woman’s Day.
Ormsby had told few people about her trip to Bali, leaving her flatmates a note to say she would be back in seven days and part of her rent, the magazine reported.
Denpasar drug squad chief Agus Tri Waluyo said police had information there would be drugs at a party in the villa. ‘‘We made the ambush . . . we found the evi- dence.’’ According to a statement given to investigators, Ormsby admitted that, some days before the raid, a drugs party had taken place with five of her friends, who had returned to their home countries.
Ormsby was born in Rotorua to father Mike Ormsby and mother Rangi Morrison. It is understood her adoptive parents also shared the surname Ormsby. Ormsby and her brother, Michael, were raised in Australia.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said its consul from the embassy in Jakarta was providing consular support.