A Cobram man and a former Cobram man have been sentenced over a carjacking where a woman was threatened with a knife before her car was stolen.
Damien Dunbar, 35, of Cobram, pleaded guilty in Melbourne County Court to carjacking, possessing cannabis and a summary charge of possessing cartridge ammunition without a licence.
His co-accused, Upinder Mann, 27, of Glen Waverley, pleaded guilty to aggravated carjacking.
The pair had been walking past a house in the Melbourne suburb of Carnegie when a woman pulled into her driveway at 5.10pm on June 6 last year.
Mann pointed a knife at the woman and demanded her car keys.
The court was told Dunbar did not know Mann had a knife and told her “we don’t want to hurt you, we just want your car”.
A passer-by stopped and asked what was happening and Dunbar told the woman to tell the passer-by that he was her boyfriend.
The pair took the car but police traced it through a GPS tracker.
When police found the car in Collins St, Melbourne, Mann was still behind the wheel, and was arrested.
Dunbar, however, had just gone into a nearby store, and walked away when he saw the police.
He was arrested in Cobram almost a month later.
When he was arrested, he had a small amount of cannabis and one ammunition cartridge on him.
In delivering her sentence, Judge Amanda Chambers said she accepted the offending was “not planned or sophisticated”.
“Fortunately, the victim was not physically assaulted. Nevertheless it must have been frightening,” Judge Chambers said.
The judge also spoke of Mann’s childhood, which was “marred by violence” by family members, and noted he was also abused while overseas when he was young.
Mann moved to Cobram in 2018 and worked as a cleaner, and it was in Cobram that the pair met.
The court heard Mann was using 1.75g a day of methamphetamines and GHB and would drink a bottle of spirits each day.
The judge said Mann’s prior court appearances resulted in stints in jail, with convictions including ones for carjacking after a dispute with a taxi driver about a fare, assaults, robbery, making threats to kill and assaulting emergency workers on duty.
Judge Chambers noted Mann, who has lived in Australia since his late teens, had a borderline personality disorder, and faced the prospect of being deported to New Zealand.
Judge Chambers also addressed Dunbar’s childhood, which included violence against him, and being introduced to cannabis at the age of 13, and then methamphetamines at 14.
She said Dunbar had a “lengthy” criminal history, with most priors “consistent with drug abuse”.
Mann was sentenced to four years in prison, and must serve three years before becoming eligible for parole.
The 515 days he has spent in pre-sentence detention were counted as time already served.
Dunbar was sentenced to two years and four months in prison, and will have to serve one year and six months before becoming eligible for parole.
The 487 days he has spent in pre-sentence detention counts as time already served.
Dunbar was also fined $300 for possessing cannabis and $300 for possessing the cartridge ammunition.