Babysitter fined K1000 for attacking police officer

A BABYSITTER has been fined K1000 for attacking a police officer in uniform in the Ela police barracks, Mt Hagen, on March 7.
Magistrate Jacinta Doa ordered Julie Wani, a mother of five from Pangia in Southern Highlands, to compensate Sgt Mororbe Kopon within a week.
“If you don’t pay, you will be sent to Baisu jail for six months of hard labour,” she said, adding that “you had no right to be at the barracks and to attack a policeman in full uniform.
She said Wani had no respect for a police officer who was qualified and recognised by the police department to live at the police barracks.
Wani was looking after the children of her younger sister whose husband, a police officer at the time, died last year.
Her sister, Fiona George, was away in Port Moresby to claim her husband’s final entitlements.
Wani told the court that on two occasions, Kopon attacked her and told her to move out of the police house.
“I was then sitting on a bench. My sister had returned from Port Moresby and was inside the house when Kopon confronted me,” she said.
“Since he had attacked me twice when her sister was away, and thinking that he would attack me again, I grabbed an iron bar to hit him.”
Kopon told the court that the officer in-charge of the barrack had given him permission to handle the case of his colleague who had died.
“I was attacked with an iron bar and Fiona also assaulted me by pulling my coat and pulling off the buttons,” he said.
Fiona told the court that she was trying to separate her sister and Kopon by pulling at his coat.
She was not found not guilty of assault.
Doa ordered Wani’s K200 bail to be forfeited to the State while George’s bail money was refunded.