Rock and pie-thrower’s ‘unacceptable’ behaviour earns him jail term

“This is social disorder”, a Cairns magistrate has declared while sentencing a repeat offender to jail for throwing pies at a shop attendant and rocks at a hotel window.

Harry Vernon Samual Frank, 31, pleaded guilty in Cairns Magistrates court to six charges of assault, wilful damage, possessing a knife in a public place and stealing.

A fed-up Cairns magistrate has told a repeat offender who threw rocks at a Cairns hotel window and pies at a shop attendant that jail was the only sentencing option he had left.

Harry Vernon Samual Frank, 31, of Kowanyama, pleaded guilty to six charges of common assault, wilful damage and stealing around Cairns city in January this year.

Magistrate James Morton told Frank he’d run out of options and sentenced him to three months’ jail, allowing him to make an immediate application for parole because he had already served 132 days in custody.

“P for prison is what he’ll go for because, frankly … I’m not giving him probation,” Mr Morton said.

“We’ve got to be realistic … he’s not probation material,” Magistrate James Morton said of a man with a six-page criminal history who has been damaging property, stealing and assaulting people around Cairns in 2024 and early 2025.

“When you look at the facts and his criminal history, he’s going around with a knife in his bag and he’s not a juvenile, not a young person to say, ‘I need rehabilitating’. He just continues to reoffend. He goes around throwing pies, throwing rocks at windows and smashing them. Come on, let’s be serious, it’s really beyond the sentencing realm because he just keeps continuing to offend.

“We’ve got to be realistic. He’s not probation material.”

The court was told Frank threw rocks and damaged windows at Cairns Holiday Lodge and tried to smash the glass doors with a broken drain pipe on one occasion, then threw pies at a Cairns North shop attendant at 1am on January 4 this year before “helping himself” to items from the fridge and a pair of headphones, and “walking out the door like you had a right to do it.”.

Harry Vernon Samual Frank, 31, reached under the security screen at the Cairns North Coles Express at 1am one January morning, twice throwing two pies from the store at the shop attendant.

“This is social disorder, property damage and some low-level violence against people going about their jobs … You going around helping yourself and making people feel threatened in their place of employment is unacceptable,” Mr Morton said.

Defence solicitor Chris Harris said Frank’s mother died in a fatal crash after a funeral in Kowanyama in 2016, where a man drove a car into a house where mourners had gathered.

He had also lost his father and, recently, his nephew had killed himself in Frank’s home.

“Ultimately, when he is released, he wants to get his personal belongings together in Cairns, pack up and go back to Kowanyama to address his substance issues and contribute to his community,” Mr Harris said.

Mr Morton warned the man that, if his six-page criminal history kept increasing, so too would his prison terms.

Originally published as Rock and pie-thrower’s ‘unacceptable’ behaviour earns him jail term