KEY POINTS:
A teenager who robbed a dairy of $300 at gunpoint threw most of it into a river after he escaped.
The money ended up in the Tarawera River when 18-year-old Wiremu Lemalie, of Whakatane, discarded the clothes he was wearing when he robbed the shop in Kawerau.
Yesterday, he pleaded guilty in the Whakatane District Court to the June 13 aggravated robbery.
He told police he committed the robbery because his girlfriend needed the money.
Police prosecutor Peter Rankin told the court Lemalie had gone to Kawerau on June 13 and spent most of the day with extended family. Arming himself with a BB gun, he went into the dairy and told the storekeeper to give him all the money from the till.
He twice threatened to shoot the storekeeper but it was not until Lemalie asked who was out the back of the store - it was the storekeeper's 6-year-old son - that the storekeeper opened the cash register and handed over $300.
Lemalie took the money and ran toward the river, removed the clothes he had put on for the robbery and threw them in the river - with $240 of the stolen cash.
Lemalie was remanded in custody to July 25 for sentencing.
- The Daily Post
