Strahinja Cvetkovski: Preston man steals Skout date’s Mazda 3

A single mum had no idea what she was getting into when she picked up her Skout date, who quickly turned aggressive and erratic.

Strahinja Cvetkovski has been handed six months’ jail.

A man made his Skout date drive him around Melbourne then stole her car, a court has heard.

Strahinja Cvetkovski was sentenced to six months’ jail at the Heidelberg Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday, December 8, having pleaded guilty to charges including stealing motor vehicles and possessing ice.

The 31-year-old Preston man left his date standing in a carpark at Epping Plaza as he drove away in her Mazda 3 on December 28, 2019.

She had picked him up earlier and had driven him to several locations around Melbourne.

The court heard he’d become aggressive and behaved erratically when she didn’t know how to get to the places, so she had let Cvetkovski drive.

He then pulled up at the shopping centre and told her to get out of the car, because he needed it.

Cvetkovski’s licence was disqualified and he had only connected with the woman on dating application Skout four days earlier.

He threatened to block her number when she messaged him wanting the car back, then said he would return it but never did.

The court heard the woman was a single mother and the car, which was not insured, was all she owned.

Days earlier, on December 20 he was chased by police in Reservoir before he was found at a Broadmeadows apartment building at 3.45am with a $60,000 car he’d stolen from Caulfield North.

Cvetkovski had stolen another car from a Montmorency carpark overnight in February 2019.

He was locked up in July when police arrested him at a Southbank apartment and found him possessing ice while on bail.

The court heard the Serbian national had previously spent months in jail and risked losing his permanent residency visa if he was jailed for more than the time he’d already spent in custody.

His lawyer said Cvetkovski was suffering from PTSD and had stopped his labouring work after being stabbed in the foot in a random attack in 2018.

With Cvetkovski having already served 133 days’ jail, Magistrate Michael McNamara noted the six-month sentence would not mean Cvetkovski had been handed a total of 12 months’ jail in his life, so his visa should not automatically be cancelled.