Pair feel unsafe after attack
The elderly victims of a pair of violent home invaders want to leave their Christchurch home because they do not feel safe but have found they will have to stay.
John Mccammon, 83, who was attacked, threatened, and robbed, told one of the offenders at her Christchurch District Court sentencing: ‘‘You have viciously and violently changed our lives and we will never forget it.
‘‘Alternative accommodation is beyond our means and we have had to move back into our home but we will never be comfortable there,’’ he said.
His 81-year-old wife, Colleen Mccammon, said: ‘‘My home now has horrible memories attached to it.’’
Her face was left black and blue and she now wanted to move away from Christchurch.
She told Maera Elizabeth Todd: ‘‘I hope this is your last conviction. This is your chance to turn your life around.
‘‘Please don’t do this to anyone else again.’’
Todd, 39, admitted charges of robbing the couple and an aggravated assault on Colleen Mccammon. John Mccammon said he had formed a strong attachment to his heritage home and had spent years pottering in the garden.
The home had been a huge part of the couple’s enjoyment and life.
Mccammon said he was now angry and fearful, after believing he was going to be killed in the robbery on August 13. The arrival home of his wife during the robbery probably saved his life, he said. The offenders were screaming at the couple and he feared he was going to be slashed with the garden secateurs.
‘‘I was screaming for anyone who might be passing the house,’’ he said. Todd tried to muffle his screams with a pillow, and then grabbed the secateurs and threatened him. He was now receiving regular counselling but he remained ‘‘frightened for the instability of our future’’.
Defence counsel Richard Peters said Todd had been contrite from the start. It was clear she wanted rehabilitation.
Crown prosecutor Sean Mallett said the robbers followed the elderly man in the mistaken belief he had a large sum of cash.
‘‘They were preyed upon as easy targets.’’
He said Todd’s involvement had been more violent than the co-offender. Todd threatened the man using a pair of secateurs and had pushed the woman down the house’s front steps when she arrived home.
He asked for a uplift to Todd’s sentence for her criminal history: 48 previous convictions including theft and shoplifting and assault with a weapon in 2014. She was assessed as a high risk of reoffending, and was a chronic user of methamphetamine.
Judge Jane Farish said Todd had been offending for 30 years.
She was a mother and her children wanted her to have ‘‘a different life’’, the judge said.
Farish imposed a prison sentence of seven years four months and Todd will have to serve half the term before parole can be considered.
The other offender, Shantai Lawson, 38, pleaded guilty to the robbery charge on Monday and has been remanded in custody for sentencing in Christchurch on January 16.
The couple’s son, Chris Mccammon, said the sentence was ‘‘just wrong’’.
His parents were too traumatised to speak, he said.
Todd and Lawson had ‘‘stolen’’ his parents’ quality of life.
‘‘My father deteriorated emotionally a great deal [after the robbery]. He used to mow the lawns for the elderly people in the street and ... he can’t even walk straight now without his cane.’’