Daniel Lea fronts court over terrifying home invasion in Kyabram

A meth-fuelled violent thug walked into a Kyabram man’s house with a machete and demanded $20k in cash or else he’d get “a shotgun in the guts”.

Daniel Lea has gone to jail for threatening a Kyabram man in his house with a machete and trying to extort $20,000 from him.

A violent thug who walked into a Kyabram man’s house with a machete and tried to extort $20,000 in cash from the sale of a pricey horse before taking off in his ute has been jailed.

Echuca man Daniel Lea, 37, pleaded guilty at the County Court in Bendigo in February to aggravated burglary and armed robbery and appeared for sentencing on Tuesday.

Lea terrified a couple he knew while they were sleeping in their Underwood Grove house in Kyabram house on August 27, 2022 and demanded they pay him $20,000 or he would get “a shotgun in the guts”.

He was sentenced to three years and six months in jail, with a minimum non parole of two years and three months.

Lea knew the homeowner from living in Kyabram and was aware he had just sold a horse for about $20,000.

Judge Pardeep Tiwana said although Lea has no recollection of the violent home invasion, it appeared the offending was motivated by his desire for money to fund his methamphetamine habit.

The victims were so terrified by Lea’s behaviour they initially told police the offender was not known to them, Judge Tiwana said.

Lea banged on the door of the Kyabram house with a “two-foot-long” machete and when the owner opened it, he pushed inside and demanded the money.

Daniel Lea was involved in a violent home invasion in Kyabram when its owners slept.

The victim told Lea the money was at his father’s place, trying to negotiate with Lea as the standover man smoked a cigarette in the victim’s living room and drank a can of beer.

Lea made the victim hand over keys to his Holden Commodore ute, saying he would take the vehicle until he paid him the money.

While holding the machete to the victim, Lea forced him to delete all the CCTV footage of the incident.

The victim told police he was terrified he or his wife would get chopped by the machete.

About midnight on September 1, 2022 Lea crashed the stolen ute on Forest St, Kyabram and police recovered the machete used in the home invasion and a cellphone from inside the vehicle.

He got back onto meth immediately after being released from custody just a few months before the Kyabram robbery.

Lea had just been released from prison after he fired a rifle into the house of a man in Stanhope who was accused of raping a teenage girl.

Judge Tiwana said Lea entered the house at Kyabram at night when the couple were in bed, he was armed with a machete, the offending involved pre planning and that his presence could not be described as ‘momentary’.

The 25-year maximum sentence Parliament has set for such offending, he said, reflected the seriousness with which the lawmakers and courts viewed serious violent offences.