A judge has described the actions of a man who rammed a police car and ran into two other vehicles after stealing almost $1000 worth of groceries from a Kialla supermarket as “wanton, desperate and dangerous offending”.
Darren Reid, 32, of Shepparton, pleaded guilty in Shepparton County Court to damaging an emergency services vehicle, attempting to escape police, two counts of theft and two counts of criminal damage to property.
He also pleaded guilty to summary charges of dangerous driving, failing to stop after a crash, unlicensed driving, committing an indictable offence while on bail, resisting an emergency services worker, driving an unregistered vehicle and conduct prejudicial to the good order of a police jail.
The court heard Reid went to Coles at Riverside Plaza and scanned $962 worth of items at the self-service checkout before leaving without paying on December 27 last year.
His partner and another woman had done the same thing with $988.14 worth of items 20 minutes earlier.
A manager followed Reid to his car and asked him to pay, but he refused to.
When police arrived one minute later, they parked behind Reid, blocking his vehicle.
Reid reversed into the police car before then driving forward over a concrete median strip, where he collided with a car and a ute, before driving off at excessive speed.
He did not have a driver’s licence and his car was not registered.
The following day, Reid was spotted by an off-duty police officer at JB Hi-Fi in Shepparton.
When police tried to arrest him, he thrashed around so they could not put handcuffs on him.
When put in a police cell, he banged his head against the wall, cutting his forehead, and was taken to hospital.
When police went to take him back from the hospital, he ripped his arms away and tried to escape.
The court was also told that on December 20 last year, Reid and his partner stole $441.60 worth of groceries from Woolworths.
Reid’s defence counsel, Liliana Dubroja, argued her client’s offending was “very unsophisticated”.
She also said of the two vehicles Reid hit in the car park, one had a damaged door and the other had scratches to the panel where the wheel was.
Ms Dubroja also said her client was “in the grips of” methamphetamine use and was using 1g of the drug a day in the lead-up to the offences.
She said he relapsed into drug use in early 2022 after being clean from drugs while serving an earlier jail sentence and then during the parole period afterwards.
Judge Michael Bourke sentenced Reid to 21 months in prison, followed by a 20-month community corrections order.
He also declared the 308 days of pre-sentence detention as time already served.
The community corrections order will include 200 hours of community work, but Judge Bourke ruled that up to 50 hours of this could be spent doing drug treatment or offending behaviour programs.
Judge Bourke said he accepted the grocery thefts were “motivated by the need to fund your drug use”.
However, he referred to Reid’s actions as “wanton, desperate and dangerous offending”.