POLICE arrested a 41-year-old woman on Sunday morning after a she was reported breaking into a fenced-off area around a generator, a fuel cell containing about 1000 litres of diesel fuel and a phone tower control box at the Gordon playing fields.
Police arrived at the scene about 7.20am and located the woman nearby.
After she was arrested, a police search located two kitchen knives, a fire starter and flammable chemicals, gloves and industrial electrical fuses.
There was extensive damage to the generator, its fuel storage pod, an electricity meter and other property at the site. Both the generator and nearby mobile phone tower are inoperable.
The Gordon woman faces the Magistrates Court on Monday, charged with three counts of property damage, possessing a knife without a reasonable excuse and possession of stolen property. Further charges may be laid in the future regarding the interruption to the mobile-phone network.
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![Teacher Vanessa Jones has been living in Higgins since 2001, and while she loves the area, she says she is “fed up” with the neglectful ACT government.
The Higgins shops have been completely abandoned, says Vanessa, preventing the opportunity for residents to have a community-centred space to socialise.
They only received bins nine months ago, she says, and requests for a water station and repairs to the bus station have gone unanswered.
“It’s very, very slow,” says Vanessa.
“I asked for the zebra crossing on Fullagar [Crescent] to be repainted, and we had to wait about six or nine months.
“That’s just such a long time… we pay a lot of rates.”
Vanessa says assistance from the government only seems to go to communities with time-rich and assertive communities, leaving places such as Higgins, where the majority of households have both adults working full-time and English may not be the first language of the family, at an automatic disadvantage.
“If you’ve got two people working, paying a mortgage, raising two or three kids, they don’t have the time,” says Vanessa.
Vanessa says the lack of attention quieter places such as Higgins is receiving is starting to look a lot like favouritism.
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