Natalie Helen Sheridan outside the ACT Courts in 2023. Photo: Albert McKnight.
An attempt to steal rum and coke blew up into a “melee” outside a Canberra chicken shop, where the wannabee thief assaulted four people.
Natalie Helen Sheridan’s assaults also occurred just one month after she repeatedly hit a woman at a light rail stop and stole her cigarettes.
She pleaded guilty to two robbery-related as well as four assault-related charges before facing the ACT Galambany Court for sentencing on Wednesday (22 January).
The court heard how, on the morning of 19 September 2023, she asked a woman for a cigarette at the light rail stop on Ipima Street in Central Canberra.
When the woman refused, Sheridan broke the strap on her victim’s bag and hit her in the head, knocking her to the ground. She then continued to hit her, including in the face, and walked off after stealing her cigarettes.
The woman was left with bruising to her eyes and face, as well as a cut.
Sheridan, who is from Moruya on the NSW South Coast, was arrested and then granted bail over the incident.
But on the morning of 6 October 2023, she was with several other people when she took two packs of rum and coke, worth $31 each, from the Braddon Supermarket and tried to leave the store.
A staff member tried to grab the alcohol and she repeatedly pushed him, resulting in a scuffle between them.
Then, when a staff member from the Charcoal Rooster takeaway shop next door became involved, as did Sheridan’s co-offenders, it “became quite a melee outside the chicken shop”, Magistrate Alexandra Burt said.
Sheridan punched the chicken shop staff member twice in the head. When a bystander grabbed her arm to stop her from hurting him, she spat in the bystander’s direction.
After another chicken shop staff member stepped in, she repeatedly hit this woman in the head with a Calvin Klein perfume bottle when the woman had been dragged to the ground during the melee.
She used the bottle to hit the first chicken shop staff member and the bystander in the head as well.
Magistrate Burt said both of these robberies involved “considerable acts of violence”.
Natalie Helen Sheridan was granted bail in September 2023 before the chicken shop incident the following month. Photo: Albert McKnight.
“This incident at the chicken stop started really as an attempt to steal,” the magistrate told her.
“It’s created a situation where people have walked away having been harmed by your conduct.”
Sheridan was also before the court for sentencing after committing a theft at Priceline Belconnen, as well as for assaulting one police officer and resisting another.
The court heard the 38-year-old had spent nearly eight months in custody.
Her lawyer, Mr Bol from Peter Agoth & Associates, said his ultimate submission was that “Ms Sheridan has spent enough time in custody”. He asked for her to be handed an intensive corrections order (ICO), a community-based sentence.
Magistrate Burt said after suffering “significant losses”, Sheridan had returned to substance use.
But since going into custody, she had participated in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program, joined Alcoholics Anonymous and had been approved to join the Ngunnawal Bush Healing program when she was released into the community.
Sheridan was sentenced to seven-and-a-half months in jail, which accounted for time served.
She was released from custody on Wednesday to serve a 16-month ICO, during which she is not allowed to consume non-prescription drugs, and was fined $500.
Original Article published by Albert McKnight on Riotact.
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