By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Out of apparent boredom, a Noble Park man has wielded a silver dessert spoon as he held up a local service station and bottle shop, the County Court of Victoria has heard.
Robert McLeod, 47, pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted armed robbery as well as the theft of three Crunchie chocolate bars from the servo in the early afternoon of 25 September 2017.
At first, the servo worker who knew McLeod as a regular customer thought the accused was joking. That was before McLeod held the spoon to the worker’s face and repeated his demand for cash.
McLeod then walked back to his home at a supervised residential care facility, and ate the Crunchies in his room.
The same afternoon, at a nearby bottle shop, he demanded money and held the spoon up so the handle was displayed.
The frightened worker thought it was a knife. The worker and a customer fled, and McLeod remained pacing through the shop for a while.
He was arrested at his home at the facility that afternoon. He told police he took the spoon from a drawer at the facility and attempted the robberies out of boredom.
He didn’t enjoy living in a supervised residential care facility, apparently with little to do except watch TV, Judge Gabriele Cannon noted in sentencing on 26 September.
McLeod was said to have preferred jail where he enjoyed companionship and being the “centre of attention”.
Judge Cannon said it was of great concern that McLeod had committed similar offences in the past, including ordering meals at restaurants and then threatening staff with knives and demanding money.
He’d received community corrections orders and jail terms of up to 35 months.
“While your offending in some ways has been rather pathetic, it’s been also very frightening for the people you’ve threatened.
“At the very least you’re a nuisance.
“At the most, you’re someone who behaves in a very frightening way to people who are trying to do no more than do their job.”
It was no comfort to the victims that McLeod was not motivated by “money, greed or drugs”.
However, McLeod’s moral culpability was reduced by his moderate intellectual disability, which had a “great deal to do with your offending conduct”.
Prior to sentencing, an extensive support and supervision plan was devised by DHHS and Corrections Victoria to occupy McLeod. He had “fairly poor” rehabilitation prospects, Judge Cannon said.
“The problem is you appear to offend to entertain yourself, to get attention and also because you prefer life in jail to life in the community.”
Declaring she couldn’t “warehouse” McLeod in jail, Judge Cannon sentenced him to a three-year supervised community corrections order including mental health treatment and a justice plan.
He was also jailed for 366 days, already served in pre-sentence remand.
