A burglary victim who says the intruder urinated on her carpet will have to shoulder the cost of the clean-up after a police botch.
Sinead Terri Booth (22) originally appeared in the Dunedin District Court to be sentenced two weeks ago but the hearing was adjourned to yesterday after she disputed a $40 repayment for the carpet clean-up.
Judge Michael Turner ordered police to speak to the victim to get more information but it transpired that those inquiries had not been undertaken.
He was ''extremely concerned'' by police's inaction, and refused to put the matter off again while Booth remained behind bars.
His sentencing remarks, he ordered, would be forwarded to the district and area commanders, as well as the regional manager of prosecutions.
Sentencing proceeded on the basis there had been no urination.
Booth's three-month crime spree began in August last year with an aggressive barrage of 19 text messages to the partner of her ex-boyfriend.
They culminated in the defendant threatening to strangle the woman and slit her children's throats.
The next day she took a $150 taxi ride, for which she failed to pay, and the burglaries began a couple of weeks later.
On September 17, in Cromwell, Booth waited outside a Gilling Pl home until the victim had left with her granddaughter.
She rifled through a medicine cupboard and made off with a money tin.
Half an hour later she got into another home on the same street through an unlocked back door.
Booth again searched for medication and also pocketed a gold bracelet, hair straighteners, headphones, sunglasses and an ornament.
In October, the domestic burglaries continued in Dunedin.
With her fourth and final break-in, she poked a stick through a cat flap to knock a key from a lock which she used to enter the unoccupied house.
Booth got away with prescription medication, jewellery and cellphones, the court heard.
When police tracked her down she blamed her actions on her drug addiction and claimed she did not recall all of her offending.
Defence counsel Sophia Thorburn said her client had never been to prison before and her 3-year-old daughter remained in the care of others.
The $255 reparation sought by the victims could be repaid on release, she said.
Judge Turner noted Booth had one previous burglary conviction from 2014.
The break-ins were particularly serious, he said, because - at both day and night - they involved the risk of a confrontation with residents.
Booth was jailed for two years and five months.
