Thief forgets stealing caravan with mate from Pakenham property — and the mate’s name
A thief who stole trailers, tools and a caravan worth $50k from a rural Pakenham property with a mate reckons he can’t remember the crimes — or even his pal’s name. But was the magistrate buying it?
South East
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A forgetful thief reckons he couldn’t remember driving to the sticks with a mate and stealing two trailers — and then going back 45 minutes later and nicking a caravan.
Travis Wood, who faced Dandenong Magistrates’ Court accused of stealing the $50,000 haul and on driving charges, said he couldn’t remember his pilfering pal’s name, leaving the stolen caravan at his father’s vacant block of land or robbing a shed of power tools.
The court heard Wood and a mate drove two vehicles in convoy to an unoccupied rural Pakenham block about 3am on May 30.
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One of them broke the padlock to the gate and they both backed their utes into the large shed, hooking up a trailer each.
The pair stole a chainsaw and other tools, placing them into one of the trailers before driving away.
They parked the two nicked trailers at an empty Upper Beaconsfield block before going straight back to the Pakenham property and stealing a Jayco caravan.
They dropped that off at the same Upper Beaconsfield site and Wood went home to Cranbourne.
Police inspected the Upper Beaconsfield block a few days later and uncovered the stolen caravan, linking the theft back to Wood as the land belonged to his father.
That evening they raided Wood’s Cranbourne house, finding the stolen chainsaw and one of the trailers in the yard, which by now had been painted blue.
They found the second trailer had also undergone a colour change and was being stored in a Pakenham carpark.
Wood had also been banned from driving at the time.
He told police he couldn’t remember who his accomplice was, nor why he had been involved in the thefts.
In court his defence lawyer said Wood, who pleaded guilty to stealing the haul and the driving charges, had a very traumatic upbringing and has relapsed into drug use, especially ice and heroin, when his mum had been released from jail that week.
She said Wood “hadn’t been sleeping” and couldn’t recall what he had been doing.
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Magistrate Jack Vandersteen said he accepted Wood had a traumatic childhood and had also recently been subjected to a home invasion himself.
But he didn’t buy the failed memory excuse.
“I don’t understand the blackout defence; it doesn’t make sense, it is an easy way of deflecting,” Mr Vandersteen said.
“You (Wood) might want to jar your memory.”
Wood was sent for a community corrections order assessment.