Category: Sarah Robson

New Zealand

12:49 pm on 29 September 2017

Sarah Robson, Auckland Reporter
@rarahsobson sarah.robson@radionz.co.nz
An Auckland woman who stabbed her friend to death at a pamper party has been jailed for at least 12 years.
Anna Browne, 37, was found guilty in August of murdering mother-of-two Carly Stewart in October 2016.
Browne stabbed Ms Stewart once in the head with a large kitchen knife, inflicting an 11 centimetre stab wound.
She died after losing massive amounts of blood.
In the High Court in Auckland today, Browne was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum non-parole period of 12 years.
The court was told that the pamper party was meant to be a chance for a group of friends to catch up, have a few drinks and get their nails done.
But things took an ugly turn.
Justice Wylie said the two women got into a verbal argument, but Ms Stewart had decided to “be the bigger person” and walk away.
He said it was Browne who decided to pursue the matter.
She went into the kitchen and got a large knife. She hid it behind her back as she went to find Ms Stewart in the lounge.
Justice Wylie said Browne muttered Ms Stewart’s name before stabbing her once in the head.
The murder was witnessed by a number of Ms Stewart’s friends and family, including four children.
Browne then put the knife in the kitchen sink, took her handbag and left the party.
She returned to the scene at about the same time the police arrived and claimed she couldn’t remember what had happened.
Ms Stewart’s mother, Sharlene Stewart, told the court her daughter was a loving mother to her two sons.
She said the family still struggles to understand what happened.
“Shame on you Anna Browne, how dare you murder our beautiful Carly, what did Carly to deserve this?
“What did Carly do to deserve this? You gave Carly no chance to defend herself.”
She said the two boys are still scared and sleep with weapons beside their beds.
In the dock, Browne wiped tears from her eyes as she listened to the victim impact statements being read out.
In handing down the sentence, Justice Wylie said Browne had a lengthy criminal record.
While most were for dishonesty offences, in 1995 she was convicted in the Youth Court of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
In 2004, Browne was convicted of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm over an incident involving a machete in which she was the getaway driver.
Despite Browne’s lawyer, Marie Dyhrberg, telling the court that her client was aware of the impact of what she had done on Ms Stewart’s family, Justice Wylie said Browne was still seeking to shift the blame over what had happened.

https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/201860595/pamper-party-murderer-sentenced-to-life-imprisonmentWhen the sentence was read out, the full public gallery remained silent.

https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/340494/how-dare-you-murder-our-beautiful-carly

1:28 pm on 19 December 2016

Sarah Robson, Reporter
@rarahsobson sarah.robson@radionz.co.nz

When James Sanday heard a cacophony of squawking outside his Mount Roskill home at 8 o’clock on a Sunday night, he didn’t expect to find his cat being dive-bombed by a seagull.
But there was Spring – the cat – cowering on the roof, covered in a bit of bird poo, waiting for the opportune moment to make her escape.
Mr Sanday said one gull swooped on Spring three or four times, while another circled overhead.
He’d never seen anything like it.
But a cat being attacked by a seagull might not be an unusual as you think.
Graeme Taylor, a principal science advisor at the Department of Conservation, said the gull in question was probably a southern black-backed gull.
They nest right around the New Zealand coast, but they can also be found in cities, nesting on top of buildings or in vacant lots.
And it’s about this time of year that their chicks are hatching.
“During December and January, there’ll be young chicks at nest sites, so the birds become very aggressive to defend their chicks during that time of year,” Mr Taylor said.
“That’s when the most human interactions occur with birds dive-bombing them during the chick rearing period and as defence they will swoop low over top of you, do a loud squawk and they’ll poop on you to drive you away.”
Mr Taylor said these sorts of attacks are common when people stray into nesting areas.
While people who live on the coast know to steer clear, he said people in urban areas might not be expecting it, because they don’t realise the gulls nest inside the city limits.
“The chicks, particularly when they get a bit bigger, will sometimes fly off the top of the building and land down on the streets, and the adults will actually defend them on the streets as well.
“And if they land somewhere near someone’s back garden, then you could end up with a chick running around and the adult birds defending it from people or from pets.”
Mr Taylor said as chicks, the gulls look a bit like rabbits with their grey plumage.
“A pet could become quite interested in them, but they probably aren’t expecting the adult to be so fiercely defending them, so that would certainly give a cat a real fright.”
If you found yourself confronted with an angry seagull parent, Mr Taylor said you should back away until they stop attacking you.
“If you do see the chick running around, allow it to get in somewhere that’s out of sight of people, it’ll usually hunker down underneath a shrub or something like that and go quite quiet so that they’re not being attacked by other predators.”
And Mr Taylor you wouldn’t want to end up covered in seagull poo.
“It’s pretty unpleasant because you know that black-backed gulls do feed around refuse dumps and offal and things like that, so what droppings are coming out can be very smelly and very full of bacteria, so you don’t really want to get coated in it.”

https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/320786/it’s-seagull-attack-season-hide-your-cats

I’m Sarah Robson and I was at FAHS from 2001 to 2005. While I was still at school, I started writing for a national youth magazine, Tearaway. I went to Victoria University, where I studied political science and got involved with the student magazine, Salient. I’ve been a journalist for six years now, working for Australian Associated Press then Radio New Zealand. I’ve covered both general news and politics.

7:51 pm on 8 March 2017

Sarah Robson, Reporter
@rarahsobson sarah.robson@radionz.co.nz

Some Clevedon locals stripped down to their underwear in a desperate attempt to rescue stock stranded by floodwaters today.
The area has been hit hard by heavy rain that has drenched much of the upper North Island, trapping tourists in the Coromandel and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of campers, most of them children, from regional parks.
The plains around Clevedon village, south of Auckland, have been inundated by the swollen Wairoa River, leaving stock scrambling for any scrap of dry land.
Locals have spent much of the day driving up and down North Road, offering help to rescue stranded cattle, sheep and horses from the flood waters.
Ryan Roberts said there was stock missing all over the place.
“We’re just assessing the situation, just seeing where the cows are, just making sure they’re safe, and if not, we’ll try our best to get to them, or get a boat and see if we can guide them away.”
By mid-afternoon, Mr Roberts said he had helped rescue “30-odd cattle and a couple of horses”.
To rescue one group of four cows, Mr Roberts and two other men had to swim through the floodwaters.
“They were stuck on a little island in the middle of where the river is. We just swum out, had a look around and there was a couple in the bush.
“We’ve had to swim them out of the way and get them back to dry land,” he said.
And it was tough work to keep the cows’ heads out of the water.
“They were a bit knackered, they had probably been out there for a while, but we did our best,” Mr Roberts said.
One of Mr Roberts’ fellow rescuers, Shaun Brantsma, said they found one cow stuck in a tree that was almost drowning.
“It was well over both our heads, so we had to swim back with that one, taking turns holding it up out of the water, got our breath back and swam in again and got another four,” he said.
“Now we’ve got to find the rest of them.”
Mr Branstma said it was something he had to do to help the community.
“A lot of people’s livelihoods are floating down the river at the moment, stranded. You’ve just got to get in there and get it done.”
As the men were rescuing one cow, other locals arrived offering to bring down trailers and utes to transport them to drier paddocks.
Mr Brantsma said there had probably been some heavy stock losses in the area.
“A thousand sheep on Tourist Road are gone … A few people I know have lost all their stock. Anyone we can help is better than nothing.”

https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/326174/stock-rescued-from-flood-‘you’ve-just-got-to-get-in-there