Deadline: Mornington Peninsula couple get the raw deal in home invasion

Having criminals smash their way into your house in the middle of the night is one thing, being caught naked when they do so is quite another.

A Mornington Peninsula couple suffered through a particularly unpleasant home invasion.

Not every yarn about being caught out sleeping naked is as funny as the hardy annuals about hotel guests being accidentally locked out of their rooms wearing nothing but embarrassment.

Everyone knows someone who has been trapped on the wrong side of a one-way door without benefit of pyjamas or robe. It was, for instance, one of the staple yarns always told by (and about) the late, great Ron Barassi at “sportsmen’s nights.”

But there’s nothing funny about a story that unfolded on the Mornington Peninsula recently, uncovered by our Herald Sun colleague Regan Hodge.

Our man Hodge has got to the bottom of a home invasion incorporating full frontal nudity that could easily have had a far unhappier ending.

He reports that a certain high roller and his wife were asleep in their house when two youths armed with machetes broke in.

It was around 4am and the unclothed couple were in a deep sleep when the bad guys woke them, menaced them with the weapons and demanded their car keys.

Apart from the frightening prospect of being robbed or worse, the discombobulated victims had another problem: they couldn’t really retrieve the keys without revealing they were in their birthday suits.

“They (the home invaders) were barking ‘Where are the keys, where are the keys?’” the householder told Regan last week.

“My wife asked them if she could grab a towel first. They were patient enough to wait for her to do that while I grabbed some shorts.”

To the couple’s relief, the keys were swiftly found and the thieves immediately sped into the night without a backward glance.

Their shaken victims dressed ready to receive the police. At 6am, when it was all over, our man cracked a beer to settle his nerves.

Deadline might have preferred something stronger.

Home away from home

Dubai is hot in more ways than one. Apart from the sky-high desert temperatures outside the airconditioned skyscrapers, the capital of the United Arab Emirates is the hottest destination of the moment for scallywags of all sorts — including Melbourne underworld identities, accused underworld identities and underworld-linked identities.

Last week, it was western suburbs man Nazir Haddara who decided the affluent middle-eastern hotspot was the place to be.

Haddara was busting to get to the UAE for some R and R but the cops had other ideas, intercepting him at Melbourne Airport and laying various high-level tobacco-related charges.

The Herald Sun recently revealed underworld-linked fighter and trainer Salim Aschna has headed to the desert city for a while, perhaps because he has heard of the “six star” luxury hotels there that rival Las Vegas’ flashy creations.

There is no suggestion that Aschna — who has been photographed with Comanchero bikie boss Tarek Zahed — is involved in any criminal behaviour.

In fact, he became a victim of crime last July when his Dandenong gym, Fighters Xpress, was torched.

Nazir Haddara is seen leaving the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court last month. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Other frequent flyers, like northern suburbs gangland powerbroker Ahmed Al Hamza, are well-established in Dubai.

He headed off more than two years ago and is believed to have enjoyed a deal of investment success both over there and back here.

Tobacco wars participant Kazem Hamad also liked the look of the desert kingdom but local authorities didn’t like the cut of his jib and sent him elsewhere.

When two young gunmen pounced on Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim in a near-fatal 2022 ambush, they made quick travel plans and were in Dubai in a flash.

Finally, it is unclear when, if ever, Hells Angels boss Angelo Pandeli might get back there.

He was deported last month and looks to be stuck in Sydney for quite a while.

Anything that isn’t nailed down

You might think the patch of real estate at the front of Melbourne Magistrates’ Court is the last place that a member of the law-abiding public would be the victim of crime.

You’d be wrong. Fact is, that precinct obviously has a strictly local demographic on sitting days that makes it as good a place as any for a spot of casual theft, given that the friends and family of those charged with crimes of dishonesty are milling around, comparing tattoos and gold chains.

Sprinkled among the rogues gallery, of course, are quick-thinking lawyers, seasoned police and hardened members of the media.

Our photographer colleague David Geraghty found all this out the hard way while on the job last week.

The trusting Geraghty put his coffee keep-cup down to attend to some work … and turned around a few minutes later to find it had been stolen.

The guilty party got clean away with a dirty keep cup. What the unhappy snapper will never know is whether the culprit was a fellow media representative or a criminal lawyer or an old-school cop … or a member of the court-attending public just keeping their hand in.

Cop this!

Daubing messages and slogans on police cars is all the rage at times of enterprise bargaining.

Recently, members have a new slogan which kills two birds with one stone by attacking both their wage levels and the justice system.

An arrow pointing forward to the cabin from a central window says “underpaid.”

Pointing back to the prisoner-holding compartment at the rear is the word “bailed.”