Director of Public Prosecutions v Loader

[2019] VCC 39

IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA Revised
Not Restricted
Suitable for Publication

AT GEELONG
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR 15-01724
CR 18-02154

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

RYAN LOADER

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE MULLALY
WHERE HELD:	Geelong
DATE OF HEARING:
DATE OF SENTENCE:	29 January 2019
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Loader
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2019] VCC 39

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject:
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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Mr D. Brown
For the Accused	Mr J. Williams

HIS HONOUR:

1Ryan Loader, on 24 June 2018 you were drinking and gambling with another man at the Portarlington Golf Club.  There were few customers in the venue that night and the staff decided to close up early.  You had left the venue earlier.  You were seen on CCTV footage returning to the golf club around the time that staff were walking to their cars to go home.  You had in the interim armed yourself with a Taser and some sort of stick or homemade weapon.  You had hooded jumpers on and a mask.  You approached the three staff members, demanding they reopen the venue.  You activated the Taser to give emphasis to your threatening demand.  You continued to state, "Open up.  I need money".

2While this was going on one of the staff was able to ring for the police.  Upon realising the victims were not going to open up the venue and one was on the phone to the police, you walked away.  Although the victim stood up to you, as it were, nonetheless the brief ordeal was frightening.  One of the victims in his victim impact statement makes this clear.

3Those that work in such venues and necessarily leave at night must be reassured that the courts will firmly deal with those like you who brandish weapons at them, demanding the cash that these venues necessarily deal with.

4Denunciation and general deterrence must be prominent sentencing considerations.  After you were arrested a month or so later on 27 July 2018 you made full admissions.  In your record of interview you explained that financial circumstances had become bleak.  You were confronting immediate eviction.  Your power had been cut, you had little food.  This was said to be at the heart of your desperate state of mind when you embarked on this attempted armed robbery.  There was more behind why you have become so financially strained.

5In contrast to where you were in your life on 24 June 2018, you had for many years before and, indeed, for many years after school, worked long and hard.  You had been employed as a tyre fitter at Tyre Power in Drysdale for seven years.  You had built up a strong reputation with the management.  You came from a good, supportive family and were involved in a strong, lengthy relationship.  I was told you had saved $20,000, no mean feat for a young couple just into their twenties.

6It seems that you tired of the physical grind of tyre fitting work.  There were injuries as a consequence of seven years at that job.  You resigned, thinking you would secure a new job speedily but you did not.  Rather than cut your cloth to your different financial circumstances, what you did was continue and increase your use of those dreadful gambling poker machines.  Indeed, on the night of the attempted armed robbery you were seen in the golf club on the pokies.  That was the case, notwithstanding that you did not have money for power or rent.  You have said that you felt an addiction to these poker machines.

7You also took to using ice and prescription drugs.  These background circumstances do not excuse your conduct and you never sought to say that they did but it gives an explanation for why you, at 23, after having such an impressive start to your adult life, ended up committing a crime like this and now you are facing a term of imprisonment.

8Just to give emphasis, your own words were to the police in your record of interview when asked to tell the police from go to whoa what happened, you said, "Well, my power got cut.  I was falling behind on rent.  I had no food, no money, nothing.  My girlfriend didn't have a job at the time.  I didn't have a job or income at the time, had already borrowed money off friends and family, yeah.  Couldn't think, work out any other way of getting any money and, yeah, only option I could come up with was to think I'll try and get money from the golf club.  It didn't work at all and, yeah".

9What you said to the psychologist, Mr Cummins, also gives emphasis to your state of mind.  Paragraph 27 of his report, you said, "I was desperate, I'd run out of money.  Just before the attempted armed robbery the electricity was cut off and we were given two days to move out of our house.  Like when I left my job at Tyre Power I thought it would be easy for me to get another job but I wasn't able to get another job so I was unemployed.  I know what I did was stupid but I got myself into a state of mind where I felt I had to live or die and I thought, well, I've got to steal money from the golf club to survive.  Maybe I was feeling angry towards the golf club because I had lost so much money there through gambling.  Before the attempted armed robbery I'd been drinking alcohol at my mate's and then we've been drinking at the golf club and I'd used ice and Xanax.  At the time my girlfriend was at home.  What I did was ridiculous.  Being here on remand has been really good for me.  Being in gaol has been a real eye opener.  I definitely don't like being in here and I've seen how drugs have wrecked so many people's life and I'm 100 per cent convinced that I'm not coming back to gaol and I'll stay on the straight and narrow".

10There is another important aspect of your recent past history.  On 7 March 2016 I dealt with you after a sentence indication hearing when you then pleaded guilty to a charge of recklessly causing serious injury and recklessly causing injury.  The events that gave rise to those charges occurred on 13 March 2015.  An altercation between a group involving you and your friends and the victim in his group, commenced at the Drysdale Hotel and then outside when you were walking home.  You had been drinking.  However, the victim in his group were very intoxicated.  You were confronted in the street.  Your one punch caused the victim serious brain trauma.

11After much anxious consideration I sentenced you not to a term of imprisonment or Youth Justice Centre detention but to a lengthy, onerous community corrections order.  I gave very considerable weight to your prospects for rehabilitation.  I was very impressed with you at your young age, that you had a work history and work ethic that you had.  In my sentencing reasons I did say what was obvious, that the sentence for the crime of recklessly causing serious injury, given the awful outcome for the victim, was very merciful.  I made clear that if you did not comply with the community corrections order in every regard then the mercy shown would not be repeated.

12This attempted armed robbery on the Portarlington Golf Club breaches the community corrections order that I imposed but, in any event, your compliance, especially to the unpaid community work involved in that community corrections order almost from the outset was poor.  Also you had not responded to arrangements to do an anger management program.  Breach proceedings were on foot prior to your attempted armed robbery.   As was conceded by your counsel, the fact that you were on a community corrections order at the time of the attempted armed robbery is an aggravating factor in the overall sentencing task.

13In addition to the plea for the attempted armed robbery I also heard the breach of the community corrections order.  The report from Community Corrections officer pointed out that you initially engaged but things quickly broke down.  Your counsel said your employer was flexible but getting to and from Geelong from Drysdale without a car proved difficult.  Given the knife edge that you were on when you were sentenced to the community corrections order as opposed to being incarcerated, there is little that can be said that truly justifies our poor compliance.

14Your counsel emphasised that you remain a young man, still just 23, and one who has shown real capacity and prospects in the past.  Thus he submitted that your rehabilitation should remain as an important sentencing consideration.  I agree.  There is much for the community to gain if you resume your previous lawful, hard working ways.  Your counsel also emphasised that since you were remanded and kept now 189 days or thereabouts in custody, you have been shocked into realising what a dreadful life prison is and how you do not want to become a reoffender who wastes his life doing gaol terms, one upon the other.  This sentiment was captured in what you said to Mr Cummins that I have referred to.

15You have the support of your girlfriend and that is important.  Also you have a brother who is prepared to have you reside with him upon your release.  That too is important.  Your counsel urged a combined prison term with another community corrections order or, alternatively, a term of imprisonment with a potential for a long period on parole.

16The prosecutor contended that the latter course was the only realistic option.  With that submission from the prosecution I agree.  The attempted armed robbery was not the most grave example of that crime but it had aspects of spontaneity, though you did think about it for long enough to get your weapons, disguise and wait for the staff to emerge.  Thus even putting all things going for you, such as your youth, your waking up to yourself, your previously shown capacity to work hard, and your determination to put an end to gambling, all these matters and the fact of your early plea, cooperation, your admissions and remorse, they nonetheless leave me with the view that gaol with a non-parole period as a potential is the only just and appropriate sentence.

17Also separately your breach of the community corrections order is a serious crime and it must see you re-sentenced and, in my view, that also must result in a gaol term and one with some cumulation upon the sentence for the attempted armed robbery.  There were other offences that flow from the police finding things when you were arrested and other offences that are connected to the attempted armed robbery.  Those matters are not as concerning as the principal offending.

18Taking into account all matters put by your counsel in a comprehensive plea, the matters contained in Mr Cummins' report, together with all the other aspects in this case including impact on the victims expressed in one of the victim impact statements, I impose the following sentences.  Can you please stand?

19Committing the crime of attempted armed robbery you are sentenced to two years and nine months' imprisonment.  On the indictment for the possession of explosives charge you are convicted and discharged.  In respect to the summary offences, the possession of prohibited weapon, you are sentenced to one month imprisonment, and for committing an offence while on bail, seven days' imprisonment.  Thus the total sentence on the indictment in the summary matters is two years and nine months.  In respect of the breach of a community corrections order I find that proven.

20You are already sentenced on the recklessly cause serious injury to 14 months' imprisonment; the recklessly cause injury, two months' imprisonment, and separately for the crime of breaching the community corrections order, you are sentenced to one month imprisonment.  Nine months of the re-sentencing for the recklessly cause serious injury and the one month on the breach of the community corrections order are to be cumulative upon each other and upon the sentence that I imposed on the indictment in the summary offences.

21The total effective sentence is three years and seven months and I order that you serve a non-parole period of two years before being eligible for parole.

22The pre-sentence detention that I have calculated is 189 days; is that right?

23MR BROWN:  I think it is 186, Your Honour.

24HIS HONOUR:  All right.  You agree?

25MR BROWN:  It was 179 up until the 22nd, add seven days.

26HIS HONOUR:  Yes, all right.  Is that right?

27MR WILLIAMS:  I agree with that, Your Honour.

28HIS HONOUR:  186 days and I referred to 189 earlier.  It is 186.  That figure having been reckoned I will ensure that the declaration I am about to make is entered into the records of the court.  The declaration is that 186 days is part of the sentence that I have just imposed.  Had you pleaded not guilty to these offences I would have imposed a sentence of four years and nine months with a minimum term of three years and six months.

29There are other orders in relation to forfeiture and the like.  I cannot remember precisely.

30MR BROWN:  Yes.  I think there is an application made for forfeiture.

31HIS HONOUR:  Forfeiture, that is it?  All right.

32MR BROWN:  Yes.

33HIS HONOUR:  Application for forfeiture of items in respect of the raid upon you and I will grant that application and those items to be forfeited.  There is no other orders?

34MR BROWN:  No, Your Honour.

35HIS HONOUR:  All right.  The math's right, Mr - - -

36MR WILLIAMS:  Yes, Your Honour, yes.

37HIS HONOUR:  Thank you.  Is there anything further required?

38MR WILLIAMS:  No, Your Honour.

39HIS HONOUR:  Just take a seat for a minute, Mr Loader.  Is the forfeiture order with it or to be sent or have I got it?  Right.  I will sign that order in due course, Mr Loader.  It is straightforward matter relating to materials that the police already have being forfeited pursuant to law.  I am not going to hold you here while that paperwork is done.  In due course Mr Williams will see you no doubt but, Mr Loader, it is now time for you to go with the prison authorities and commence your sentence.

40I am grateful to you, Mr Williams, for your assistance. 

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