Benjamin John Wickes was in a cocaine-induced psychotic episode when he broke into a family home and held a woman and her six-year-old daughter hostage with a kitchen knife, a court heard Friday.
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Wickes, who told the court he "must've used a bit too much [cocaine] too quick" after dinner that night, smashed multiple glass window panes and bled all over the Griffith home before grabbing the girl.
He also forced the wife to sit on his lap while he held a knife to her chest.
It was about 2am when the family was woken by Wickes' yelling and breaking glass.
Court documents say he barged into the home and was frantically running around the house, screaming that someone was after him.
He pulled out a knife from the kitchen knife block and pulled the 6-year-old girl toward him, telling her "I'm not going to hurt you".
The wife and husband edged closer to the girl, before Wickes grabbed the wife and she managed to push her daughter away from him.
The terrifying ten minute incident, relayed to a triple-o call operator by the husband, ended as suddenly as it began with with Wickes running from the house and down the street screaming for help.
Police found him up a tree calling for help.
He left the home littered with broken glass and red with blood from lacerations to his arms and legs, for which he later received 30 stitches.
Wickes pleaded guilty to property damage, using an offensive weapon and aggravated burglary, and on Friday Justice Michael Elkaim sentenced him in the ACT Supreme Court to up to four years' jail.
With a non-parole period of two years and time already served, Wickes could be eligible for release in February 2020.
The woman was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress after Wickes' crime and the girl would not be left alone in the house, the husband said in a victim impact statement read to court.
He said he would be haunted by the memory of Wickes' hands on his loved ones and his blood soaked into their clothes.
"Our lives are now damaged and, despite all the effort and cost we have gone through to clean up from your attack, our beautiful home is now filled with horrific memories," the husband said.
The wife said in her statement she did no longer felt safe in her own home.
She said she would never forget the sound of her husband's terrified voice on the phone to triple-o.
"He has served in Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan and has seen horrific things but the sheer terror in his voice that night still rings in my ears," she said.
The wife told Wickes while she hoped for a heavy sentence she also hoped he would turn his life around.
The Queanbeyan man told the court he was using two grams of cocaine per day at the time of the invasion on February 4 this year.
His recollection of the events that morning were hazy. But he said he had been using cocaine and drinking that night. "Just after dinner I must've used a bit too much too quick," he said
He said he also got into a fight that night and suffered a blow to the head that knocked him unconscious.
When he came to walking down the street, he said, he did not know where he was.
"My arms were stiff, I thought I was having a heart attack and thought I was being pursued," he said.
He had apologised to the family and wanted to help them move on and "show them I'm not a monster".
Wickes had expressed remorse and accepted responsibility for the crime.
In the sentence, Justice Elkaim acknowledged the man's efforts to rehabilitate so far but the prison term had to acknowledge the harm he had caused to the victims.
