Woman threatened to kill Tinder date

A woman who sent death threats to a man she had been on a Tinder date with has been sentenced to eight months’ jail.

It is repeat offending for Karen Ilya Laing, a 28-year-old Dunedin woman who was sentenced on Thursday at the Christchurch District Court.

She was jailed for four months in January for the same kind of offending, with the judge saying she had already been jailed three times since 2012 for similar obsessive behaviour.

Defence counsel Trudi Aickin told the court that a psychological report on Laing mentioned Asperger’s syndrome, which meant she ‘‘misreads social cues’’.

‘‘She has difficulty selfregulating her emotions, responding to her perceptions of ridicule and rejection as a preoccupation with feelings of frustration and persecution.’’

Laing spoke in court, explaining to Judge David Saunders that the earlier offending involved a man she met through the Tinder dating app who invited her to his house at 2am but then rejected her.

‘‘I tend to get very frustrated when people don’t understand me.’’

Her latest offending involved a man who was in Dunedin but had since returned to Auckland.

He had contact with Laing through Tinder and he was troubled by threatening texts he received during the 12 days afterwards.

Judge Saunders said that although Laing was in Dunedin and had no means to carry out the threats to kill someone in Auckland, she had meant that they would be taken seriously.

She also admitted threatening a security guard at a Dunedin electronics store after she was asked to leave.

Aickin said Laing had referred herself for counselling sessions but had difficulty accessing the treatment she ‘‘desperately wants and needs’’ while in prison.

She had been held in custody after earlier pleading guilty in the Dunedin District Court to charges of threatening to kill, criminal harassment, and speaking threateningly.

The case was then transferred to Christchurch, where Judge Saunders was told the latest offending involved two new victims.

Aickin said Laing’s mental wellbeing had suffered because of media attention from the earlier cases because it had led to bullying on social media.

The judge sentenced her to eight months’ jail with six months of post-detention conditions when she must attend psychological assessment, treatment and counselling as required by her probation officer.

She was not allowed to contact her victims.