A young woman’s “unsophisticated” attempt to give an armed robber a fake alibi unravelled when the Uber records she handed police were linked not to her, but to the accused’s accomplice, a court has heard.
Aimee Neita Williams, 22, was last week given a five-month suspended jail sentence after pleading guilty to perverting justice.
She provided the false alibi for Michael Hopkinson, one of two masked men who attacked and robbed a woman in her driveway at Blackmans Bay at 4am on August 26, 2023.
One of the men was armed with a firearm.
The day after Hopkinson was arrested, Williams went to the Hobart police station and made a statutory declaration claiming she had been with him that morning.
She told police the pair had caught an Uber together to a Glenorchy venue and that Hopkinson had not travelled south of the Southern Outlet.
But the Uber records she gave police did not back up her story.
They showed a trip had been ordered at 3:27am to the victim’s home, not Glenorchy and that it was taken by Hopkinson’s alleged accomplice, Gary Sullivan.
Phone records also placed Williams near the robbery scene at the time.
Williams later spoke to Hopkinson by phone while he was on remand at Risdon Prison, in a call that was recorded.
During the call, she raised the possibility that she could be charged with perjury.
When police arrested Williams in February 2024, she admitted the story was false.
She told officers she had come up with it ‘on the spot’ and knew what she had done was an offence.
Justice Kate Cuthbertson said the statutory declaration “proved to be an unsophisticated attempt to assist Mr Hopkinson”.
“Providing a false alibi during the course of the investigation of a serious violent crime is a bad example of the offence of perverting justice,” she said.
Williams was 19 at the time. The court heard she had lost her mother to cancer at 12 and had experienced homelessness and drug use before becoming a mother at 17.
Hopkinson was recently found guilty of the robbery.
Williams had been in custody since June 10 and was sentenced to five months’ jail, backdated to that date, with the balance suspended for 18 months.
