A pair of violent, drug-addled robbers who randomly preyed on a transplant patient in Springvale and other innocent victims have been jailed.
Michael Robb, 27, of Blackburn South, and Adam Tsaktserlis, 30, of Warrandyte, pleaded guilty at the County Court of Victoria to a litany of charges including aggravated carjacking, causing injury and drug possession.
In March 2021, the pair approached a driver in Springvale. Robb punched him, struck him with a baseball bat and fled in the victim’s Honda CRV.
Tsaktserlis, who was with Robb, drove off in his own Navara dual cab.
The victim, who was a kidney transplant recipient, had told the pair he had a medical condition.
He stated to the court he still remembered the carjacking and feelings of terror “like it was yesterday”, sentencing judge Trevor Wraight said.
Two days after the carjacking, a man and his carer were walking when “gratuitously” attacked by the pair in the Navara in Blackburn South.
Robb struck the carer twice to the back of the head with a large metal object before the victim escaped.
The other victim was chased down and punched, kicked and stomped multiple times by Robb, who also took his wallet with $400 and ID and bank cards.
Tsaktserlis joined in with multiple strikes with a metal pole during the two-and-a-half minute bashing.
The man was hospitalised with two lacerations to the head requiring stitches, a broken nose and vertebrae and lost a tooth.
Two weeks later, a pair of 15-year-old boys were waiting at traffic lights at 8pm when Robb and Tsaktserlis approached them in the Navara.
Robb held up the boys with an imitation gun, took a phone from one of the boys and struck him to the head with the handgun.
On 15 April 2021, the offenders were intercepted in the dual cab by police in Berwick.
Robb was found with meth, anabolic steroids, cannabis, $200 cash and a fake drivers’ licence.
Police also seized other vials of testosterone and anabolic steroids from the vehicle, as well as a cache of guns including a sawn-off shotgun, six 3D printed pistols, seven gel blasters and an imitation cap gun.
Prohibited from having a gun, Tsaktserlis was charged with possessing a traffickable quantity of them. He had also tried to buy three further gel-blasters with a credit card stolen from one of the robbery victims.
He pleaded guilty to applying for a $2000 loan using a fake drivers’ licence.
In sentencing on 11 September, Judge Wraight noted Robb’s “chaotic” childhood, mental illness and long-running drug abuse, with meth being his chief problem.
He’d been previously jailed and was at an age where he risked being institutionalised, the judge said.
Tsaktserlis’s childhood was “unremarkable” and still had family support. But at 16, he’d suffered significant head trauma when bashed after a football game in Richmond and was treated in ICU.
At the time of the crime spree, he was doing “half a gram a day”.
There was a clear and obvious link between the pair’s current and past offending and drug use, Judge Wraight noted.
Tsaktserlis, who had been on bail at the time, had a “limited and passive” role in the carjacking, and a lesser part in the assaults, he said.
The aggravated carjacking alone attracted a mandatory minimum jail term of three years.
Robb was jailed for seven years and two months. He was eligible for parole after four years, nine months.
Tsaktserlis was jailed for six-and-a-half years, with a non-parole period of four years.
Both of their sentences included 879 days in pre-sentence remand.
