A LAVINGTON girl involved in a violent home invasion last year where a mother and her young children were terrorised got emphatic messages on two fronts yesterday.
The girl’s mother and magistrate Tony Murray told her in Albury Children’s Court that she was on her last chance to stay out of trouble.
“There has to be a line drawn in the sand somewhere,” Mr Murray told the girl, who turns 15 today.
He said her mother had been extremely patient with her in her past two years of continual offending.
“She is just too young to be left to her own devices,” Mr Murray said when asking the mother whether she was prepared to have her home.
After some pondering, the mother said: “I am prepared to have her back, but this will be it”.
Mr Murray said the girl would spend longer and longer periods in custody if she kept offending.
The girl was sentenced to a control order last year after breaking into two Lavington homes with an accomplice.
A woman cowered in fear with her children, aged 8 and 11, in a bedroom as the girls ransacked her home and forced a laundry door.
The woman called triple-0 and her husband.
He rushed home from a bakery where he was working and police arrested the intruders.
The girl has been on parole and appeared for sentencing on charges of theft, resisting arrest, malicious damage and entering inclosed lands.
She stole a party wig from a shop in Centro shopping centre on January 23.
Police went to arrest her at a North Albury house on February 10, but she was intoxicated and repeatedly refused to accompany officers.
Mr Murray said the girl had breached bail six times before being remanded in custody for her seventh breach.
She spent 19 days in juvenile detention before yesterday’s appearance.
Further offending could lead to her being on the streets which Mr Murray said would be terrible and a waste of a young life.
The girl received a 19-day sentence on the malicious damage charge, allowing her to be released yesterday, and put on a 30-hour community order.
