Shifty’s Bar robbery: Mark Travaglini jailed for bashing and robbing Brunswick St bar owner
A Fitzroy boozehound will be looking for a new local after he ran amok at his regular Brunswick St bar threatening customers and staff and bashing the owner who he claimed owed him $300,000.
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A boozehound threatened staff and customers and bashed the owner of a popular Fitzroy bar during a drug-crazed rampage.
Mark Travaglini, 34, was sentenced in the County Court on Monday to 14 months’ jail after pleading guilty to robbery, aggravated burglary and intentionally causing injury.
Travaglini stormed Shifty’s Bar in an “aggressive and agitated” just before 11pm on October 20 last year.
Travaglini, a Shifty’s regular who was friends with staff and owner Mark Elyoughon,
yelled at other patrons at the Brunswick St venue and told them to leave, the court heard.
Travaglini threatened a bartender who shared an apartment with Mr Elyoughon and demanded his house keys.
The drug-crazed man then raided Mr Elyoughon’s Brunswick St apartment about 100m from the bar.
He kicked in Mr Elyoughon’s bedroom door and punched the victim while he was in bed.
The court heard Travaglini punched Mr Elyoughon an “estimated six times” while armed with plastic knuckledusters.
Travaglini demanded Mr Elyoughon hand over $300,000 he claimed the victim owed him.
He then showed his victim a flick knife he had tucked in his pants.
Travaglini stole a small white safe and fled.
He appeared shortly later in an “aggressive mood” at Fitzroy restaurant Transformer.
Police “subdued” Travaglini with pepper spray after he was aggressive to officers.
Investigators recovered the house keys, the safe and the weapons.
Witnesses who saw Mr Elyoughon not long after the attack said he looked “bloody and beat up”.
“Like someone who had just lost a boxing match,” a witness said.
Mr Elyoughon made a statement to police five days later, telling investigators he still felt “pretty badly beaten up”.
The court heard Travaglini, of Fitzroy North, had a criminal history including priors for weapons, affray, assault and multiple counts of recklessly cause injury.
“Your demands for $300,000 were irrational,” Judge Patricia Riddell.
“It is unacceptable to use violence and threaten(ing) behaviour in this way to settle a dispute.”
Travaglini — who had spent 302 days in custody — was also handed an 18-month community correction order.
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