The Gold Coast Bulletin

STORM IN A D-CUP

Kindy teacher smuggled drugs in her bra – now she wants Blue Card back

- VANDA CARSON REPORTS

A GOLD COAST kindy teacher is appealing the loss of her blue card, taken away after she attempted to smuggle drugs, hidden in her bra, into prison for her boyfriend. Tori Elizabeth Giacomanto­nio, 24, from Pimpama, said she believed the package she brought into the jail contained tobacco. Ms Giacomanto­nio told the District Court her mistake had led to her being stripped of her Blue Card and to her sacking from her position as an “early childhood teacher” at Community Kids Ormeau.

A DRUG smuggling kindergart­en teacher has vowed to return to the classroom in a passionate plea to her sentencing judge.

Tori Elizabeth Giacomanto­nio, 24, from Pimpama, told the District Court she was “broken” but refused to let her terrible mistake “destroy” her after she was sacked for smuggling dozens of opioid pills into a Brisbane prison hidden in her bra.

She was found with 36 buprenorph­ine pills in her bra by prison staff and police at Wolston prison on July 23, 2017 when she was booked to visit her boyfriend Ryan Keith Williams, 30.

“I realised the moment it was done that it was something that I could not take back”, she told District Court Judge Deborah Richards in a letter during her sentencing on April 23.

Giacomanto­nio told the court her mistake had led to her being stripped of her Blue Card in December last year, and to her sacking “effective immediatel­y” from her position as an “early childhood teacher” at Community Kids Ormeau on February 14 this year.

She has vowed to return to teaching, her lifelong passion, telling the court that she has appealed aginst the decision to refuse her a Blue Card.

Her card was refused on the grounds that it showed she had “gross inability to judge appropriat­e behaviour and a blatant disregard for the law”.

Giacomanto­nio told the court that her now ex-lover Williams “played” her, by asking her to smuggle tobacco into the prison, telling her she would not get in trouble. “I believed him, every word he said,” she told the court.

She admitted sending a text to Melinda Francisco, the mother of a fellow inmate, and Francisco delivered her the pills “packaged in a small orange balloon” on July 19.

She was busted by prison staff who were listening in on calls made over the prison phone system to arrange the drugs, which were described in calls as a “gear box”.

Judge Richards told her she had “blindly closed” her eyes to the fact that the balloon was not filled with tobacco and “it must have been something else”.

The judge did not record a conviction and Giacomanto­nio was given 200 hours community service to complete within a year.

She lost her Blue Card after police told child protection authoritie­s about the charge of aggravated supply of drugs within Wolston prison.

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