‘End of the road’ for serial youth offender who crashed stolen car into police vehicle

A teenager with an “atrocious juvenile history” including “almost a hundred” break and enters has been sentenced for a crime spree he ended by crashing into a police vehicle.

A teenager with an “atrocious juvenile history” including “almost a hundred” break and enters has been sentenced for a crime spree he ended by crashing into a police vehicle.

The boy, now 18, pleaded guilty to three counts of burglary, two counts of unlawful use of vehicles and one count of dangerous operation of a vehicle.

After he was sentenced the boy could be heard swearing and yelling as he was led back to the watchhouse to be later transported back to Lotus Glen.

The crime spree spread from Atherton to Innisfail when he was still 17 in September last year.

The teen broke into three separate homes stealing keys and vehicles from two of them and was chased out of a third by those inside.

He stole the first vehicle in Atherton before driving to Coconuts, an Innisfail suburb, where he stole a second vehicle.

Crown prosecutor Christian Peters told the court, in an attempt to flee police, the boy crashed the stolen car into a police vehicle before he was arrested.

A teenage boy has been sentenced to adult prison time after he crashed a stolen vehicle into a police vehicle. Photo: QPS.

Mr Peters told the court the had a 17-page juvenile history that included almost 100 break and enter related charges and almost 40 charges relating to stealing cars and or driving them dangerously.

The offending occurred while he was still on a supervised release order, the court heard.

He said the teenager acted with “bravado” and with an “absence of understanding of the impact of his offending”.

Mr Peters noted the boy would need to be sentenced under the provisions of the youth justice act as they were before the new government’s changes which came into effect in December.

Judge Joshua Trevino KC said the boy had been given the “benefit of every sentencing option” but “hasn’t learnt anything”.

The teenagers defence counsel Gavin Reece, told the court the offending was a “continuation” of his behaviour rather than an “escalation”.

He said the boy had suffered a prejudiced childhood with deaths in his family leaving him with little supervision.

He told the court the boy also suffered impairment from foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

Judge Trevino told the court “every option” had been attempted to put the boy on a better path but he had “thumbed his nose to them”.

The court heard the boy had spent 180 days in pre-sentence custody including time in an adult prison.

Judge Trevino recognised the boy might have realised “it was not a place he wanted to go back to”.

Mr Reece said the time in adult jail had been a “kick up the butt”.

Judge Trevino told the boy his offending showed complete disregard for public safety, adding he had reached “the end of the road”.

He was not swayed by a defence submission to lessen the mandatory time of imprisonment to 50 per cent of sentence, giving the teenager a sentence of 15 month imprisonment with a mandatory 70 per cent to be spent in custody meaning he will spend at least another four months in adult prison.

Originally published as ‘End of the road’ for serial youth offender who crashed stolen car into police vehicle