Career robber delighted with 11-year prison term

Armed robber Laurence Minhinnick was very pleased with his 11-year jail term for his latest crime.

"Cheers," he said to Christchurch's High Court yesterday, and gave a thumbs up sign. "See you in 6 years."

That was the minimum non-parole period imposed by Justice Graham Panckhurst, rather than the open-ended preventive detention term the Crown had sought for a man who has been offending for 30 years and who has already spent 12 years in jail for two earlier armed robberies.

More than $150,000 from Minhinnick's armed robbery of a Pak'n'Save security van outside the supermarket in Moorhouse Avenue last year remains unaccounted for.

Police found $27,000 when they arrested the getaway driver. They found more when they caught up with Minhinnick in a motel room nine days later, some of it hidden in a chimney.

He had plenty of time to hide a "nest egg" and his major worry since being convicted has been that the Crown would get him put away indefinitely.

Justice Panckhurst said it was a close-run decision to give him a long jail term, rather than an indefinite one.

After fighting the conviction at trial - during which his lawyer withdrew - 47-year-old Minhinnick has finally admitted his part, even giving more details of the robbery to the court from the dock on Thursday.

Other people were involved, he said, but they did not turn up on the day and he decided to go ahead with it himself.

Defence counsel Rupert Glover told the court Minhinnick was sorry for committing the gunpoint robbery and for the effect it had on the two security guards, one of whom had given up the work.

Crown prosecutor Pip Currie told the court of Minhinnick's involvement in previous robberies. She said he trivialised the robbery's effect on the victims.

Justice Panckhurst said it was difficult to accept Minhinnick's claim that, after serving his sentence, he would only want to retire to a family farm and carry out no more offending. He had said that kind of thing before.

Minhinnick told the court: "I'll be too old to be running around robbing people."

- NZPA