By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A Noble Park burglar has pleaded guilty after his DNA was found on a fruit-drink box that he stole and drank from a victim’s fridge.
Trung Nguyen appeared by video link at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on 1 May and pleaded guilty to burglary and stolen goods charges while on a community corrections order.
Residents who had just moved into a Noble Park tenancy were burgled twice, on 1 and 6 March.
On their first day of living at the address, their PlayStation Portable, sunglasses, perfumes, phone chargers and gym gear were taken during a burglary.
Five nights later, one of the resident’s cars with a distinctive ‘Be Doctor Drew’ sticker was stolen from the rear of the unit and has yet to be recovered.
On 8 March, the owner tracked down his vehicle outside Nguyen’s Lightwood Road address, with some of his stolen items lying in a rubbish pile in a nearby residential yard.
During a police search warrant of Nguyen’s home on 9 March, investigators recovered items stolen from a Springvale residential burglary the day before.
At that burgled Albert Avenue home, police found an empty Coles fruit-drink box that had been taken from the fridge and left on the floor.
A sample of Nguyen’s DNA was found on the box.
Nguyen had been previously jailed at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court for 90 days in December and had been sentenced to six months’ jail at the County Court of Victoria on 28 April.
Despite breaching two community corrections orders, Nguyen asked the court to give him the chance of another CCO with drug therapy and social supports.
“The six months he will serve (in jail) will dry him out more than he’s ever dried out before,” Nguyen’s lawyer said.
“We have an opportunity here to successfully rehabilitate him.”
Magistrate Jack Vandersteen rejected the bid, saying Nguyen had chances on past CCOs.
“It’s all like singing Kumbaya, to be honest,” he said.
He took into account the proportionality and totality of adding to Nguyen’s jail term, effectively adding four months of further jail time.
