Victorian courts: Two young thugs plead guilty after given second chance
TWO young thugs have been given a second chance by courts have thumbed their noses at the law, with one pleading guilty to theft and robbery and the other to a savage assault in Melbourne’s CBD.
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TWO young thugs given a second chance by courts have thumbed their noses at the law.
Kual Ashweel, 20, and four armed Apex gang members robbed two McDonald’s and a Caltex service station in an hour on April 20. He repeatedly punched police on arrest.
Ashweel who pleaded guilty in the County Court on Tuesday to theft and robbery, had been on a Community Corrections Order for similar crimes.
A day earlier, a Children’s Court heard that a boy, 16, on bail for a savage city assault, beat a man unconscious in St Albans, stomping on his head, all for a pocket knife.
The head of the victim, 47, swelled to the size of a basketball. A coma had to be induced.
The boy has pleaded guilty to the November 9 crime.
The magistrate, who has been asked to give the boy another chance after his sentence for robbery and recklessly causing injury was deferred, was “horrified” by his violence and wanted to know what triggered it.
Ashweel, a university student who was using alcohol and cannabis at the time of his crimes, denies being in the Apex gang, but the four youths he was driving have been described as Apex members.
One McDonald’s worker has since attempted suicide, saying in a victim impact statement: “I feel like I’m in a dark rabbit hole and I’m never going to escape it.”
Judge Robert Dyer said he was acutely aware of the need for an appropriate sentence, and the public was sick of ram-raiders offending while on non-custodial sentences.
Ashweel will be sentenced next Friday; the teen six days later. Their cases are unrelated.