A Canberra man has received a suspended jail sentence and been placed on a good behaviour order after pleading guilty to a crime spree in Canberra's south when he was a teenager.
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The man, who cannot be named, appeared before Chief Justice Helen Murrell in the ACT Supreme Court and was sentenced to 25 months of imprisonment for a series of aggravated burglaries in 2011. He has already spent 4½ months in custody, and has been released with the remainder of the sentence suspended.
He was placed on a two-year good-behaviour bond and ordered to repay $4170 in instalments of $250 a month.
According to court documents, the man broke into the China Tea Club in Lyneham while aged 16 and set off a security alarm before stealing more than $500 of alcohol.
More than a year later in June 2011, the then 17-year-old and a co-offender drove a truck into the side doors of Patto's Grog Shop in Calwell before stealing $500 of alcohol and abandoning the vehicle in bushland.
On the same night, the teen and two co-offenders kicked in the front door of the Isabella Plains Takeaway and Pizza Bar, and stole a cash register valued at about $400.
About 3.45am, the teen smashed the front window of the Monash Hair and Beauty Shop and knocked the cash register from off the counter.
Close to 15 minutes later, the teen broke into the Erindale Pizza Hut by breaking a glass door and took $30 from a charity donations box before smashing the EFTPOS machine and attempting to open the cash register.
The teen was also sentenced for stealing cash from the Yarralumla Post Office after a Mazda vehicle drove into the front of the building causing significant damage. And he was sentenced for cutting the roof off a Saab parked in an underground car park in Kingston and stealing a small sum of cash from the vehicle.
Ms Murrell said each of the offences were objectively serious despite the businesses being broken into when no one was present or likely to be present.
