KEY POINTS:
A bumbling Christchurch dairy raider used his own eftpos card to make a purchase mid-robbery, gifting police the means to track down him and his accomplice.
Police soon turned up at his workplace, and the hapless pair ended up in in the dock at Christchurch District Court yesterday where Judge Colin Doherty imposed prison sentences.
Lee Francis Whiley, 18, unemployed, pleaded guilty to three charges of aggravated robbery, two of attempted robbery, one of driving while forbidden and one of intentionally injuring a man in an earlier incident.
Tana Weke Helsham, 22, an assembler, admitted one robbery charge and two attempted robberies.
The court was told they were both first offenders.
Steven Hembrow, counsel for Whiley, said his client was bewildered.
Three weeks after taking his first dose of P - pure methamphetamine - he ended up robbing dairies to get money to buy more drugs.
Counsel for Helsham, Bryan Green, said his client had naively followed his friend along on some of the offending.
"When he went into one of the dairies, he used his own eftpos card, which was registered in his name.
"Clearly, the police did not have much difficulty in locating him as an offender."
Judge Doherty said Whiley began the offending, going into a shop carrying a Stanley knife where there was a lone woman shop assistant and handing her a note demanding money and threatening to cut her throat.
He took cash and tobacco. He used the same note for several robberies.
For the later offences, Helsham went along, and used his eftpos card while they were checking out the store. Whiley panicked and ran off at one store when the owner picked up the phone, and another robbery failed when the foreign shop assistant could not read his note.
The court had also been told of Whiley assaulting a man who walked past him in the street, breaking his jaw in two places.
Judge Doherty described that as a mindless and cowardly attack and added one year to Whiley's four-year jail term for the robberies.
Helsham was jailed for two years, with leave to apply for home detention.
He faced lesser charges because the Crown accepted that he did not know Whiley was using a Stanley knife in the robberies. Helsham was ordered to pay $100 reparations to one of the shop owners.
- NZPA
