Opal Charles-Roberts, 20, now of Mooroopna, pleaded guilty in the Koori Court division of Shepparton Magistrates’ Court to two counts of assault, intentionally damaging property, throwing a missile to endanger a person, three counts of theft, resisting a police officer, theft of a vehicle and intentionally causing injury.
Prosecutor Leading Senior Constable Chris Cole told the court Charles-Roberts and another woman attacked a staff member at Kmart in the Melbourne suburb of Reservoir on June 18 last year.
The other woman spat in the shop worker’s face, while Charles-Roberts pushed the female worker into a shelf, and when the victim pushed back, Charles-Roberts pulled her by the hair to the ground where she hit her in the head and stomped on her head.
The worker was taken to hospital after the attack.
When she was interviewed by police, Charles-Roberts admitted the assault and said it was because she was called a derogatory name.
On a separate occasion, on June 6 last year, Charles-Roberts pushed over a keyboard, and pulled down a security camera, breaking them, at a Cash Converters store in the Melbourne suburb of Preston.
On January 9 this year, she stole $210 worth of items from another Melbourne Kmart.
Three days later, she threw a full 1.25 litre bottle of drink at a Coles employee at Northland Shopping Centre in Preston, and tried to throw a metal news stand at them, after a worker asked to see her bags.
She then threw the news stand at a window, shattering the glass, before grabbing a male employee around the neck — piercing his skin with her fingernails — after he told her she could not do what she was doing.
On May 13, Charles-Roberts verbally abused police as they attempted to handcuff one of five women she was with at Northland Shopping Centre, before she was also arrested.
On July 8, she and a co-accused stole a Toyota Kluger from a house in Mooroopna and then filled it with $50 worth of petrol stolen from a service station in Barnawartha.
When she was interviewed after being arrested eight days later, she told police she “blacked out and can’t remember the offending”, Leading Senior Constable Cole said.
On June 14, Charles-Roberts stole a $105 bottle of vodka from Coles Liquorland in Vaughan St, Shepparton.
Charles-Roberts’ solicitor told the court her client had a transient childhood, and described it as one of “significant disadvantage”.
She said this related to Charles-Roberts’ culpability in the way she reacted to different situations, because she had only been shown reactions of violence by others since childhood.
The solicitor said Charles-Roberts had “rage blackouts where she did not know how to stop”, but knew afterwards that what she had done was wrong.
She also said she had been in a relationship with one of the co-accused from several of the Melbourne incidents, but that had ended now.
The solicitor said there had also been methamphetamine and GHB drug use during the period of offending.
She said Charles-Roberts had moved to lived with her grandmother in Mooroopna about two months ago.
The defence solicitor said that while her client’s offending was serious — “particularly the violent outbursts towards people doing their jobs” — she regretted what had happened.
Magistrate Ian Watkins said he was troubled by what had caused Charles-Roberts’ anger, and ordered a Forensicare report to be done before she returns to court in October.
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