The shoplifting list says it all

Staff on a Wellington commuter train this afternoon stopped the service to help a girl who was being bullied on the Johnsonville train bound for the city. When she went to get off at Raroa Station about 4pm, her bag was thrown on to the roof of a platform building. Staff got off the train to help the girl retrieve her bag, then moved on once she was deemed to be OK. That was actually a rather nice thing they did for the girl, and while we don't know the identity of the victim or the bullies, we do know that all Johnsonville train services were running about 10 minutes late tonight as a flow-on effect of the incident. Further north, a Hastings woman wrote a shopping-list of things she intended to steal on a shoplifting expedition to Masterton. The woman, Arana Maude Hawea, also stole in front of her daughter on two trips to a Hastings petrol station. On their second visit, the 10-year-old filled her pockets with chocolate bars while her mother took a block of cheese and a bottle of cream. Appearing in Hastings District Court yesterday, Hawea pleaded guilty to 13 charges of shoplifting. Hawea targeted Hastings shops during the past four months, taking seafood, rubbish bags, a butane torch, an extension lead, and a red hoodie. But most of the charges related to shoplifting in Masterton, where on August 31, she stole more than NZ$1100 worth of goods from six Masterton stores. This is just not on. Theft is wrong and she should be thrown in jail for it, something which unfortunately didn't happen to a 19-year-old teacher aide who sexually groomed a 12-year-old girl. The bellend, Kevin Dean McMillan, has been spared jail on the flimsy excuse that he would be "assaulted in a variety of ways". Instead, McMillan was sentenced to 18 months intensive supervision and 200 hours of community work by Judge Roy Wade at the Auckland District Court this afternoon.