Thomas Patrick John Gallaher pleads guilty to charges after Gympie school oval arrest

A Gympie man has pleaded guilty to more than 20 charges including evasion of police and drug possession after a dramatic schoolyard arrest following his year on the run.

Thomas Patrick John Gallaher pleads guilty to charges after Gympie school oval arrest

After a dramatic arrest on school grounds, and being on the run from cops for almost a year, a Gympie man faced court and plead guilty to a string of charges dating back to July 2022.

Thomas Patrick John Gallaher appeared in Gympie Magistrates Court on November 21, 2023 and plead guilty to 23 charges including possessing dangerous drugs, evading police, possessing drug utensils and driving with a suspended licence.

Gallaher was charged with a number of drug offences in July 2022 but his failure to appear in Gympie Magistrates Court for them meant he had been on the run from the cops for almost year.

It was his arrest on August 29, 2023, at the Gympie South State School grounds watched on by school kids when he realised the “ridiculousness” of running, his defence lawyer Laura Nightingale told the court.

After a dramatic chase across the Gympie South State School oval, police have charged a 39-year-old man with drug, evasion and unlicensed driving offences.

“He thought: ‘While I’m on this trajectory and on snowball of offending, I might as well just keep going until I’m ultimately made to stop’,” Ms Nightingale told the court.

“What led him to stop was the fact that he ran through a school, and it was right in the middle of an oval where children were playing.”

At this realisation, he waited for police to catch up with him, the court heard.

Gallaher appeared in the dock and plead guilty to the 23 charges before him after Magistrate Bevan Hughes bulk arraigned him for the most serious charge, of possession of around 4.5 grams of methamphetamine.

The court heard how 39-year-old Gallaher, a father of eight, a labourer and construction worker, had the support of his partner and mother of his children who recently had given birth to twins.

Gallaher, with a curly black mullet, sat in the dock as a number of his family members appeared in court to support him.

His snowball of offending started when his own mother died in 2019 quite suddenly and instead of fronting the charges, he decided to run from them, the court heard.

This resulted in three evasions of police, the first was in September 2022, police spotted him in a drive through, put on their lights and sirens and he drove “aggressively” away on the wrong side of the road, the court heard.

In November 2022 he drove away from police and the third attempt was in January 2023 where the police chased him for 200 metres before realising he “obviously wasn’t meaning to stop,” police prosecutor sergeant Barry Stevens told the court.

While he had a lengthy traffic record, the spate of his criminal offending was “out of character” for Gallaher with the possession of 4.5 grams of meth being the most serious offence he had been to court for, Ms Nightingale told the court.

Gallaher was sentenced to three months imprisonment, counting the 84 days of pre-custody, with immediate parole release of November 21, 2023.

Originally published as Thomas Patrick John Gallaher pleads guilty to charges after Gympie school oval arrest