By Erin Pearson
A judge has ordered a youth gang member from Melbourne’s west to serve four years in an adult prison after he was involved in a machete-wielding crime spree and near-fatal police chase.
County Court judge Angela Ellis refused a request to send learner driver, 20-year-old Abdirahman Basa, to youth detention, instead ordering him to serve his sentence for two counts of armed robbery, theft and driving offences in a men’s jail.
Abdirahman Basa, armed with a machete, was captured on CCTV.
“Other young people minded to hold up soft-target stores ... must understand this sort of behaviour won’t be tolerated, it will attract jail,” Ellis said.
“It’s extremely fortunate ... no one was killed.”
At the time of the offending, Basa, then aged 19, was a member of The Brotherhood youth street gang, which the court heard largely operated in the Wyndham area.
The court heard on March 27, 2023, two males were captured on CCTV in Werribee, where they were seen peering through the windows of a home as a mother and her six-month-old baby slept inside.
CCTV of a male peering through the window of a home before entering and stealing the sleeping family’s car.
One of the unidentified males entered the home and stole the family’s grey 2008 Hyundai i30 hatchback, crashing into a letterbox as they left and waking the home’s occupants shortly before 4am.
The following day, Basa and two co-offenders – one 18 and another 16 – drove to an NQR shop in Werribee, where CCTV captured Basa and another male entering at 8.40am, wearing a black face mask and carrying a machete.
Ellis said Basa then ordered a 16-year-old female worker and a male worker, to open a cash register while waving the weapon.
The offenders then fled to the waiting getaway car with about $300 and bottles of alcohol and drove to a FoodWorks supermarket nearby, with staff using a duress alarm to alert police.
Once inside the supermarket, Ellis said Basa pointed the machete at a female worker and demanded she hand over cash. As staff tried to hide in an office and call for help, Basa attempted to follow them.
As the trio fled the supermarket with $500 cash, detectives in an unmarked police car spotted the stolen vehicle and attempted to pursue it. Ellis said the 16-year-old offender was believed to be behind the wheel at the time.
The court heard a vodka bottle and tyre iron were thrown at pursuing police as the trio travelled through red lights and down the wrong side of the road through Wyndham Vale.
The car reached up to 100km/h through a 40km/h roadworks zone on Alfred Road, then sped up to 150km/h on the Princes Freeway, where officers were forced to abandon the chase.
Basa, right, was captured on CCTV during the robbery at NQR.
As several triple-zero calls came in from other road users, the police air wing was called in to track the stolen car as it travelled through Flemington and Ascot Vale.
Police recommenced the chase about 10.30am, with Basa now seen in the driver’s seat while travelling along Mount Alexander Road in Flemington.
The stolen car later overtook a tram before colliding with another vehicle in a residential street and crashing at Ascot Vale.
All three males inside were arrested at gunpoint. The 16-year-old fractured a rib and vertebrae in the high-speed crash and required hospital treatment.
Police run to the scene of the crash.
Police later found balaclavas, a machete, wooden club, and an array of driver’s licences and cards in the stolen car.
During a phone call from prison made later, the 16-year-old co-offender was heard telling his sister: “We robbed the f--- out of some supermarket. We swapped seats and I got in the back. We were going like 160[km/h] bro.”
Items seized from Basa’s home included a black FBI-labelled jumper.
Ellis said powerful victim impact statements showed the damage the crimes had done to the trio’s victims.
One woman said she was scared to go out at night and needs family members to check her home before she returns. Others said they now lived with hypervigilance and trouble sleeping.
“It’s not hard to imagine how terrifying it must’ve been for your victims to be confronted with a machete as they were simply going about their daily employment, trying to earn a living,” the judge said.
“It might’ve seemed like a bit of a laugh to you ... but for these people, it has been a frightening and perhaps life-changing experience. Hopefully, you’re now realising it’s simply not worth it.”
The court heard Basa has had a troubled upbringing. He was born in Ethiopia and passed through several war zones as a child before spending three years in a refugee camp on the Kenyan-Somali border with his parents.
His father died there before the family came to Australia in 2009 on refugee visas.
Co-offender, 18-year-old Aaron Kingsada, was placed on a nine-month community corrections order in December for the charges of theft and assisting an offender to commit an untenable offence.
The 16-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was ordered to spend six months in youth detention.
Ellis jailed Basa for four years and five months, with a non-parole period of two years and 10 months.