A woman who drove into a house garage with a man working inside tried to exact vigilante justice and deserves a strong jail sentence, according to a Crown prosecutor.

Justice Bernd Zabel agreed, and sentenced Katherine Hurren, 42, of Palmer Rapids, Ont., to 19 months in jail.

But Hurren, in jail since the Glanbrook incident in November 2017, was credited for time already served, and was released upon sentencing in January.

Hurren had faced an attempted murder charge that was later reduced to mischief endangering life. But on agreement in court, she instead pleaded guilty to mischief over $5,000 for ramming her pickup truck into the garage and trying to set it and another vehicle on fire.

Crown prosecutor James Nadel said police and firefighters who responded could have been seriously injured if the vehicles had exploded.

Court heard Hurren met her victim Lee Winger, a stock car racer, three to four years earlier and with an interest in racing, started sponsoring him. Winger said she gave him between $20,000 and $30,000 for racing equipment and parts.

In December 2016, Hurren began demanding her money back, which she claimed to be over $100,000. Winger, 32 at the time, believed she had become upset because he was not interested in an intimate relationship with her.

An escalating dispute saw Hurren twice create a disturbance at the Ohsweken Speedway while Winger was racing. In a July 2017 incident, she had to be removed by Six Nations police, court heard.

Winger then contacted Hamilton police to report Hurren threatened to kill him in "continued, unwanted calls."

He contacted police three more times, once over Facebook messages from her making "morbid comments about people being killed and gutted."

Police warned Hurren to stop or face criminal harassment charges.

But on Nov. 28, 2017, while Winger worked on a race car in an Upper James Street garage, with the overhead door open and in plain view, he heard "a loud revving engine noise and turned just in time to see Hurren's truck drive into the garage" and jumped out of the way.

Hurren rammed into the car he was working on and sent it crashing through the garage wall. She backed up and rammed it again, this time getting her truck stuck.

Winger had run into the house to call 911 — and while on the phone, looked out and saw Hurren stuff a rag into her truck's gas tank and try to light it on fire. She also put a lit cigarette package inside a nearby all-terrain vehicle's gas tank, court heard.

The cigarette package was burning and the gas cap area of her truck was smouldering when police arrived.

Prosecutor Nadel called Hurren's actions vengeance and "retribution for a perceived wrong" leading to "vigilante justice" without respect for the law.

Defence lawyer Brendan Neil said Hurren, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, disputes having threatened to kill Winger, and insists she did not see him in the garage that day.

Neil said she has undergone anger management and "would be the first to say she acted completely inappropriately that day."

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- Woman charged with attempted murder after allegedly ramming Glanbrook garage