A woman who fled from her care home, stole a cleaver from a shopping strip and deeply slashed a woman’s arm has been denied bail.
The woman appeared on a prison video-link at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on 10 December on charges including intentionally causing injury, recklessly causing injury, unlawful assault with a weapon, breaching an intervention order and threatening to inflict serious injury.
Bare-footed and aggressive, the woman allegedly threatened to harm a care worker at her unit and stormed out towards Autumn Place shops in Doveton about 9am on Tuesday 2 December, the court heard.
She stole a $9.99 meat cleaver at a bargain shop, pushed over a sunglasses stand and threatened to stab a worker, informant Senior Constable J Gamble told the hearing.
Outside the shop, she threw a rock barely missing a staff member’s head, the informant said.
A shop worker barricaded the door and wielded a broom in self-defence as the woman allegedly leaned over the barricade and swung the cleaver at her.
Police alleged that she also swung the weapon at a female shopper near the pharmacy, deeply wounding the victim in the upper arm.
The victim ran inside the pharmacy and was hospitalised.
The bail applicant was arrested outside her home that morning. She told police to take away the cleaver, which was under her mattress, Sen Const Gamble said.
She allegedly said she didn’t want bail because she was scared she would stab someone, the informant said. She was declared unfit for a police interview.
Her victims told police they were opposed to bail, the court heard. Members of the public who had dealt with the woman in the past said such an incident had been “inevitable”, Sen Const Gamble said.
At the time, she was allegedly subject to a personal intervention order that barred her from being within 200 metres of the Autumn Place pharmacy and its owner.
Sen Const Gamble said her carers, who followed from a distance, were “scared” and felt “powerless” to stop the alleged stabbing.
The woman, who has an intellectual disability and complex mental health issues including borderline personality disorder, was being intensively supervised 24-7 by two carers at a time and a multi-disciplinary team as part of an NDIS plan.
A Department of Families Fairness and Housing manager told the court that the Government was applying to vary her non-custodial supervision order to a custodial order due to raised community safety concerns.
If the order was varied, the only custodial setting was prison or possibly Thomas Embling Hospital – due to there being no other suitable female facilities.
A defence lawyer said the “vulnerable” woman was likely to be found unfit to face trial, and that this was the first time she’d offended with a weapon.
She was a victim from what she suffered as a child, as well as being subject to strict supervision for the rest of her life, the lawyer said.
In refusing bail, magistrate Jacinta Studham noted the woman had five other criminal matters since late 2024.
Each time, she had been released by police on summons. At no point had a court decided to release her on bail, Ms Studham noted.
It was clear that her NDIS-funded support and multi-disciplinary team was unable to prevent the bail applicant’s “high-risk offending with high-impact harm”, she said.
Nor was there evidence of increasing supervision or altering the plan to “alleviate the concerns of the court”.
There were no compelling reasons for bail, while releasing the woman posed an unacceptable risk to public safety, Ms Studham ruled.
She was remanded to appear at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court next month.
