Darwin jewel thief jailed for cognac robbery, tried to ram police car

A Darwin jewel thief who robbed a bottlo with a knife - he’d stuffed a bottle of cognac down his pants - after a drunken, high-speed police chase in a stolen car has been sentenced.

A Darwin jewel thief who robbed a bottlo after a drunken, high-speed police chase has been jailed for at least 16 months.

A CONVICTED jewel thief who robbed a Darwin bottlo while on bail for a drunken, high-speed police chase through Palmerston has been jailed for at least 16 months.

Luka Phillips, 44, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court on Thursday to aggravated robbery and a string of other charges stemming from the pursuit in January last year.

The court heard police tried to pull Phillips over after spotting him driving a stolen car erratically in the carpark of the JB Hi-Fi store in Berrimah shortly before 11pm on New Year’s Day.

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Phillips drove off at speed before stopping at Snell St in Winnellie where he put the car in reverse and accelerated hard in an deliberate attempt to ram the police vehicle behind him.

He continued to speed back toward Palmerston before police called off the pursuit when he sped through a red light at Howard Springs.

Phillips was spotted again soon after in Palmerston with the rubber on one tyre “completely torn away”, driving on the wrong side of the road and again drove directly at a police car.

The pursuit ended when Phillips crashed into a traffic island and police observed he was unlicensed and drunk to the extent that it “greatly affected (his) ability to control a motor vehicle”.

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While on bail for those offences in July, Phillips pulled a kitchen knife on a security guard at the Nightcliff BWS after he noticed Phillips had stuffed a bottle of cognac down his pants.

The court heard Phillips got into a scuffle with the security guard and waved a knife at him after he noticed an “abnormal bulge” in Phillips’ pants and tried to stop him leaving the store.

In sentencing Phillips to three years and four months in prison, to be suspended after 16 months, Justice Peter Barr noted his long list of prior convictions interstate.

Justice Barr said the most serious of those was a conviction for robbing a jewellery store in Western Australia with an imitation pistol in a heist that netted more than $53,000 in jewels.

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Justice Barr said he accepted Phillips’ story that he originally only intended to sneak the bottle of cognac out of the bottlo without pulling the knife but he rejected his claim it was in his pocket by mistake.

“You told your counsel that you only had the knife on you because you were at home at the barbecue when a friend drove past and asked if you would like to accompany him for a drive,” he said.

“You said that you were in a rush and you put the knife into your jeans pocket without any thought, I do not accept that.

“It’s quite improbable that you would somehow intentionally take a kitchen knife on your person to go for a drive or to go to the shops.”

With time served on remand, Phillips’ sentence is due to be suspended in November.