A would-be carjacker who held a screwdriver to his elderly victim’s neck and threatened to kill him in a home driveway in Keysborough has been jailed.
Petap Kong, 31, of Keysborough, pleaded guilty at the Victorian County Court to attempted aggravated carjacking among a six-month spree of car thefts and aggravated burglaries.
On a Sunday afternoon on 18 August 2024, a married couple arrived home in their MG wagon.
Kong emerged from the back seat of a car and walked down their driveway with a 20-centimetre screwdriver.
He held it to the 74-year-old driver’s neck, and told him: “I need your car, give me the keys or I will kill you.”
Sentencing judge Martin Marich praised the victim’s wife, who bravely went to her husband’s aid during the “terrifying ordeal”.
The 69-year-old slammed the car door several times into Kong’s back, in the hope that he’d leave.
Kong took the keys out of the ignition and ran away.
The terrified couple later stated to the court that they believed Kong was going to kill them. They had been victims of a burglary two weeks beforehand.
The man, stricken with cancer, stated he was too afraid to pursue his one remaining passion of gardening.
Both he and his wife stated they were housebound out of fear of being attacked again.
On the very same day, Kong was armed with a wooden bat as he broke into a house with five occupants in Springvale.
In a “frightening” confrontation, he punched a woman in the face and neck in the kitchen.
Another resident disarmed Kong, sheltered her children in the bedroom and screamed to neighbours for help.
Kong eventually asked a resident to unlock the front door, so that he could leave.
That same afternoon, Kong also stole an AEG toolbox of powertools from a Noble Park home garage.
Two days later, with the help of an accomplice, Kon stole two sets of car keys and the matching vehicles during an aggravated home burglary in Noble Park North.
He also used one of the victim’s bankcards to buy petrol, cigarettes and some Hungry Jack’s.
The following month, after being bailed in relation to the Noble Park North incident, he stole a traffic control worker’s ute that was left running as they set up signs at a work site.
Kong was tracked down after a Facebook tip, and arrested by police.
He was also guilty of an attempted aggravated burglary in Springvale, car theft and petrol drive off on 7 March 2024, a home burglary in Clayton South on 14 March, and an aggravated burglary in Noble Park and use of the victim’s bank card in April.
In sentencing on 6 February, Judge Marich said the spree was a steep escalation in the New Zealand-born man’s criminality.
His offending and attitude to other people’s property and privacy was a “collapse of mental judgement” influenced by his heavy drug use at the time, she noted.
But that was no excuse, she said.
While on remand for the first time, his mental state improved with abstinence.
Judge Marich said she’d declare a lengthy period of parole eligibility to support Kong’s rehabilitation.
He was jailed for four-and-a-half years, with a three-year non-parole period. His term includes 506 days of pre-sentence detention.
