Portland woman pleads guilty to Facebook live stream stabbing

Tamara Scorgie, now 44, pleaded guilty to intentionally causing injury and assaulting an emergency worker on duty in Warrnambool County Court on September 18.

On September 26, she was jailed for the 147 days she spent in pre-sentence detention.

That means she won't spend another day in jail.

She was also placed on an 18-month community correction order with conditions she be under supervision, do 200 hours of unpaid community work and undergo treatment and rehabilitation for alcohol and drug misuse.

The court heard Scorgie was at a Portland unit when she became embroiled in an argument with the 29-year-old male victim about 5.30pm on December 2, 2020.

She grabbed a kitchen knife from a drawer and stabbed the man in the stomach, hitting an arterial blood vessel and causing significant and life-threatening blood loss.

The occupant of the unit used her phone to live stream the incident on Facebook.

Scorgie was initially listed for trial in the same court but the matter resolved and guilty pleas were entered.

The court was told the video streamed to Facebook involved mainly audio conversations between the three people that were at the unit at the time of the stabbing.

The mood of the video had been described by the prosecution as "collective vitriol and aggression" by all three people at the home.

Scorgie claimed the victim owed her $10 after taking her Ritalin medication, which is used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Scorgie and the victim then started wrestling.

The woman broke her sunglasses during the scuffle and the victim his phone.

Scorgie then went to the kitchen, removing a knife from a kitchen drawer and saying "you're dead c***."

She then stabbed him to the left of his stomach, causing a two-centimetre laceration and heavy bleeding.

The victim was transported to Portland Hospital and then airlifted to Royal Melbourne Hospital where he received life-saving surgery.

Police attended Scorgie's house at 8.15pm that night to arrest her.

Upon being handcuffed she grabbed a police officer's little finger and hyper-extended it, causing pain.

She refused to release his finger from her grasp and was forced against a wall until she did.

Judge Kevin Doyle said stabbing was a serious offence with a maximum penalty of 10 years' jail.

He said Scorgie was lucky her victim was not killed considering his injuries were "unambiguously life threatening".

The judge said assaulting an emergency service worker was also a serious matter.

"Police should not have to put up with being assaulted when discharging duties as was the case here," he said.

During the plea hearing lawyer Simon Kenny said Scorgie armed herself with a knife in the heat of the moment during the fight with the victim.

He said the knife was grabbed from the kitchen and not worn to the house to be used as a weapon.

Mr Kenny said the victim suffered a single strike and there was no intention to seriously injure him, which the prosecution accepted.

He said the incident was not premeditated or sustained and was not a serious example of the offending.

The judge said if the victim was killed Scorgie would looking at a decade in jail.

"That's how fortunate it all was, that he was able to get treatment to stop the bleeding," he said.

"You can't go around picking up knives and stabbing people which is what you did."

Mr Kenny said his client had served a long time in jail and had not re-offended since being back in the community.

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