ACT Supreme Court sentences Aaron Campbell for car wash attack, home invasions
A robber known as “Doggie” has questioned why he may be released from jail so soon after a machete attack at a car wash. Watch the attack caught on CCTV.
Canberra Star
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A serial criminal has questioned why he may be released from jail so soon after a series of terrifying offences, including a machete attack that left a man bleeding at a car wash.
“I don’t understand any of it,” Aaron Kenneth Campbell, 37, told Justice Louise Taylor after he was sentenced in the ACT Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon.
“Why am I getting out so early?”
Campbell, who appeared via audiovisual link from Canberra’s prison, made the comments moments after learning he would become eligible for parole in four months’ time.
He was before the court to be sentenced over three incidents, the first of which occurred in February 2022.
Justice Taylor said Campbell had lured a man to a car wash in the southern Canberra suburb of Calwell “under false pretences”.
When the victim stopped in a car wash bay, Campbell ran up to his vehicle and smashed the driver’s door window with a machete.
The victim, who knew Campbell as “Doggie from Queanbeyan”, tried to reverse away but did not get far before his car crashed into a pillar.
Campbell demanded drugs from the man and, when he did not get any, struck him in the head with the machete, causing a laceration.
He then chased the man for a distance as the victim ran to a nearby service station for help.
The attack was partially captured on confronting CCTV footage that was tendered in court.
Campbell’s crime spree continued in April 2022, when he and co-offender Ivan Stephen Djerke carried out two home invasions in as many nights.
Justice Taylor said these incidents, which occurred in the ACT suburbs of Kambah and Holt, “went on for some time” and involved the use of weapons.
The armed offenders stole property from both homes, including a car in the first instance.
The second home invasion involved three victims, two of whom were teenagers.
Djerke, aged in his late 40s, was previously sentenced to a drug and alcohol treatment order after pleading guilty to two counts of aggravated robbery.
Campbell pleaded guilty to the same charges in relation to the home invasions.
However, he denied charges stemming from the car wash incident and faced a judge-alone trial last year.
That ended with Justice Taylor finding him guilty of attempted aggravated robbery, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, property damage and possessing an offensive weapon with intent.
On Thursday, Justice Taylor said Campbell was a man with “a long and depressing” criminal history that spanned the ACT and NSW.
Much of Campbell’s past could be explained by long-term substance addiction issues, which Justice Taylor described as the product of “profound childhood deprivation”.
The judge admitted the justice system had long failed to inspire change in Campbell, though his current stint in custody had generated some hope there was light at the end of the tunnel.
Justice Taylor said Campbell was behaving positively behind bars, unlike on previous occasions, and she was satisfied he was finally demonstrating “genuine commitment to reform”.
Campbell was already a sentenced prisoner prior to Thursday, complicating Justice Taylor’s task.
She ultimately imposed seven years and three months of jail time in relation to the 2022 offences, but some of the sentence will run concurrently with Campbell’s existing prison term.
Including his earlier sentence, Campbell is now serving a backdated jail term of 10 years, two months and 13 days, beginning in February 2018.
Justice Taylor set a new non-parole period of six-and-a-half years, which is set to expire this August.
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