Man jailed for ‘drunken rampage’ outside Moil supermarket

A man who pelted two northern suburbs supermarket workers with ‘baseball-sized rocks’ in a ‘drunken rampage’ after getting sloshed on stolen wine has been jailed for two years.

David Gundari, 52, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court last month to aggravated assault, property damage and theft. Picture: Jason Walls

A man who pelted two northern suburbs supermarket workers with “baseball-sized rocks” in a “drunken rampage” after getting sloshed on stolen wine has been jailed for two years.

David Gundari, 52, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court last month to aggravated assault, property damage and theft.

The court heard Gundari and three co-offenders had stolen three casks of wine from the Moil supermarket which they then drank in a nearby park and became “highly intoxicated”.

The four offenders then returned to the supermarket for more grog but started throwing rocks at the shop after being refused entry, causing the glass front door to shatter.

The two victims came outside to try to calm Gundari down at which point the offenders started throwing the rocks at them before leaving the area.

In sentencing, Chief Justice Michael Grant said the workers had suffered cuts to the head and a broken finger as a result of the attack, with the shop’s owner now worried he might lose his business following a string of similar incidents.

“Of course, you have absolutely no regard at all for the victims of your offending or the consequences for them when you go on drunken rampages like this,” he said.

Chief Justice Grant said Gundari had started drinking in his 20s and it had “gradually become a significant problem for you” which he had failed to address despite the loss of his wife to alcohol-related disease 10 years ago.

“You have never undertaken any form of rehabilitation that I can see and you have never sought any form of intervention in relation to your alcohol abuse,” he said.

“I do not consider that you are genuinely remorseful for your conduct and the impact it has had on the victims.

“If you were, you would have done something earlier to refrain from this sort of repeated alcohol-induced conduct.”

In setting a non-parole period of 12 months, Chief Justice Grant said alcohol-fuelled violence and property crime was “depressingly prevalent in the Northern Territory community”.

“Your prospects of rehabilitation now, at the ripe age of 52, depend entirely on whether you are able to remain abstinent from alcohol when you are released from prison,” he said.

“If you can, you will not offend again in your life but I can almost guarantee you that if you go back on the grog after you get out of prison, you will be back before the courts again before too long.

“That is as simple as the equation gets.”

Originally published as Man jailed for ‘drunken rampage’ outside Moil supermarket