Sister of Rebels bikie spared jail after judge grants her mercy
She helped her bikie brother firebomb cars and traffic ice, but Sarah Bruce has been spared jail after a judge took the “extraordinary” step to grant her mercy.
Police & Courts
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The twin sister of a bikie boss who admitted to trafficking ice and helping to organise the firebombing of two cars, has been spared jail after a judge took the “extraordinary” step to grant her mercy.
Sarah Bruce, under the influence of her Rebels enforcer brother Matthew Bruce, trafficked illicit drugs, recruited a man to torch two parked cars outside a rival’s home and attempted to help her defacto sister-in-law commit insurance fraud.
County Court Judge Bill Stuart said Bruce’s offending took place “under the umbrella of (her) twin brother’s lawless activities”.
Matthew Bruce faces life behind bars for commercial drug and gun trafficking, arson and a drive by shooting.
Judge Stuart said the mother-of-four boys would almost certainly face a jail term for her offending, if not for the “catastrophic” illness from which her teenage son was suffering.
The court heard Bruce’s son Tyler, 17, suffers from rare degenerative brain condition for which there is no cure.
Bruce told the court sufferers of the disease did not live beyond their mid-20s.
In delivering his sentence, Judge Stuart said it was the first time in his eight-year tenure as a judge he had ever come across a case that required such mercy.
“This is no ordinary case,” Judge Stuart said.
“The simple fact in this case is that there is no one else but you, who can properly look after your son,” he said.
Bruce spent more than a year behind bars after she was arrested by bikie-busting detectives who smashed her sibling’s major crime ring.
Her brother, his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s sister – also his mistress – were all charged alongside Bruce with a raft of drug and violence offences.
Bruce was released on bail earlier this year after her mother died, leaving her son with no carer.
Judge Stuart sentenced her to a three-year community correction order, but not before issuing the blunt warning: “If you decide to commit further offending, take drugs or the like, then it will be you who will have left your son to his fate.
“The choices are starkly yours,” Judge Stuart said.
Matthew Bruce and his former girlfriend, Cursty Shields, will be sentenced at a later date.
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