By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A drug-addicted dad set alight rubbish bins outside a Springvale temple and fell asleep in his car laden with a huge haul of heroin.
Hein Hoang, 41, was sentenced at the Victorian County Court on 17 September after pleading guilty to trafficking 683.6 grams of mixed heroin.
Police found Hoang asleep in the car in the temple’s car park early on Monday 5 August 2019 soon after he set fire to newspaper in the bins.
In a search, police also seized 5.7 grams of mixed methamphetamine among various vacuum sealed bags of drugs and “drug implements”.
A flick-knife and $1245 was also seized.
Sentencing judge Paul Lacava noted that the ‘ice’ was accepted as for Hoang’s self-use.
There was no evidence of Hoang dealing heroin, but the stash was equivalent to 312 grams of pure heroin – more than six times the minimum quantity for a commercial traffickable offence.
Mr Lacava said it was accepted that Hoang trafficked heroin to support his drug habit.
Hoang had numerous prior convictions that spanned 28 pages from the LEAP database. They date back to 1997, including six priors for trafficking heroin and two for trafficking ice.
At the time of his latest arrest, Hoang was smoking one gram of heroin and 0.5 grams of ice a day.
He was also on a disability support pension as well as a community correction order meted out by Dandenong Magistrates’ Court three weeks earlier.
He’d been on “numerous” CCOs in the past, with occasional short terms in jail, Mr Lacava noted.
Hoang’s rehabilitation prospects were “poor”.
Born in Vietnam, Hoang migrated with his family of nine siblings to Australia when he was 13. He had been racially bullied at school in Australia, leaving during Year 9.
He’d started using cannabis at 16, graduating to heroin at 17 and later ecstasy and meth.
His work history was sporadic, interrupted with his drug addiction struggles and jail terms.
Hoang had also been diagnosed with schizophrenia a decade earlier, as well as a borderline intellectual disability.
There was no evidence that these conditions were causally linked to his offending, Mr Lacava said.
Hoang was jailed for up to three-and-a-half years, with a 26-month non-parole period.
The term includes 409 days in pre-sentence detention.
